SAINT ETIENNE - “Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi)”
SAINT ETIENNE - “Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi)” (CD Single)
They’ve finally stopped trying to have hits, which strategy could go two ways: that way, into grooveless pitter-patter testcard culdesacs, or this way, into cold European not-quite-pop, the after-image of pop on the back of your eyelids. “Heart Failed” is written with a coroner’s eye, picking up the telltale details, keeping the big picture in firm scientific view. It’s a sketch of someone - a businessman, a Tory grandee, who knows - and the trails they leave behind them, of short-termist abuse, cultural vandalism and asset-stripping. It has the snap and economy of good poetry, and I’m talking about the music here, too, its balances, pulses and flares, a shrouded step left of the mainstream but still as accessible as it needs to be. This kind of remoteness and fatalism is what the new clinical Euro-music is suited to, not a teched-up take on Chicagoan finickitiness. “Heart Failed” is a great single, is the last great Saint Etienne single, and more than that is the last great New Romantic single. For now.
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