Any band that sticks around long enough, and garners enough acclaim, will eventually find their history clotted with misconceptions. For Saint Etienne, these mostly involve the role of vocalist Sarah Cracknell, who was dismissed routinely as lightweight, a figurehead in a feather boa. To be fair, Cracknell was originally one among many guest vocalists; the door simply stopped revolving after she walked in. And as has been noted, a band comprised of one female vocalist/lyricist and a couple male producer/pop geeks (in the case of music journalist Bob Stanley, professional pop geeks) leads to certain assumptions about who's contributing what.
But for someone supposedly replaceable, the dozens of sophisto-dance vocalists who've emulated Cracknell make poor auditions. And consider her one-and-a-half solo albums: 1997's Lipslide and 2000's EP Kelly's Locker, released and re-released in various permutations through the years, most recently as part of 2012's Casino Classics. Lipslide is stylistically all over the place, and nothing about it should cohere—but the voice is decidedly Cracknell's, and the flourishes both instrumental (string palpitations, synth glissandos, a pervasive lacelike delicacy) and lyrical (dance songs dropped into casually dystopian settings, characters sketched to the tossed-off but telling detail) are clearly of one mind. And then there's Cracknell's literal voice: an instrument tissue-sheer and expensive as silk, which can sound arch, wistful, lived-in and glamorous at once. Even Cracknell's nastier patrician tracks end up sounding cozy.
"Cozy" is how Cracknell describes Red Kite, her first major solo project in 15 years. Recorded in a barn by her house and inspired by the surrounding countryside, Red Kite at times evokes the wispy folk of Tiger Bay and its B-sides, or the quieter moments on Lipslide. Like Saint Etienne, it's quite conscious of its antecedents, from the pastel '60s pop Saint Etienne's perennially besotted with, to the decidedly English folk of Sandy Denny and Nick Drake. In Cracknell's discography, though, the album stands apart, pastoral where Lipslide was glossy, homespun where Saint Etienne were sophisticated. Produced by Carwyn Ellis, the album sounds comfortably lived-in upon first listen—the lilting first few notes of "On the Swings", the gentle "In the Dark". Cracknell's voice, more than a decade on, has lost none of its luster, save a world-weary undertone that's developed, most notably on "The Mutineer".
Cracknell writes characters, not autobiography; for every track that seems to deliberately play on her public image, like the mysterious, unattainable woman swooned after on "On the Swings", there are five more about people so scripted or surveilled or artfully moody they could only exist in another, slightly more cinematic world than ours. Where Red Kite differs from Cracknell and Saint Etienne's more typical work is scope. "I Close My Eyes" follows a woman on the underground and slips, 253-style, into her private reveries. As reveries go, they're low-drama, mostly about being ambivalently single, and the lyrics would be banal on paper: "never wanted to commit, but you never know." The drama's in what goes unvoiced; in the way the steady plod of the train commingles with the violins and descants conjured up around it, evoking a haunting, romantic interiority.
Muted Red Kite may be, but it is not dour. "Hearts Are for Breaking" is a sparkling, cruel indi pop song—a love triangle, sleek as the instrument and pointed as the shape—that a hundred acts, starting with Camera Obscura, could covet. In this same vein is "Nothing Left to Talk About", which takes a decidedly unromantic premise—the lovelorn narrator of "4 Months, 2 Weeks" trying to charm and swoon her way past her ex-lover's exasperated rejection (played by Manic Street Preachers' Nicky Wire)—and makes it sound as knowing as an old friendship.
If Red Kite falters, it's where it deviates from the pastoral coziness—specifically "I Am Not Your Enemy", which evokes psychedelic rock in sound but not quite in menace. Far more successful are the plainspoken likes of "Take the Silver", featuring folk-rockers the Rails and evoking Dusty Springfield, or the marimba lullaby of "Favourite Chair", which like much of Red Kite is the musical equivalent of sinking into one. One-note? Perhaps, but the note is hypnotic. There is much to be said for an album that is simply exceedingly nice, like a hug or a blanket*.* Saint Etienne earned its cult following in part for infusing dance music with high-style escapism; Cracknell proves here—if she hadn't already—that she's as adept at the escapism that comes of imagining settling down.
