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Saint Etienne’s film mines the freedom and chaos of summer

Shot before and during lockdown, the visual album teases the fun we’ve all been longing for

In the newest video for the legacy dream-pop band Saint Etienne, Alasdair McLellan teams up with AnOther’s Fashion Director Ellie Grace Cumming to create a sunkissed and sodium tribute to the great British summer. The 45 minute film, which is available to view on BFI Player now, journeys everywhere from Stonehenge to the Yorkshire Dales, near the photographer’s hometown, and builds on his career-long loveletter to rural England.

It arrives at the perfect time, too, just as the club doors and park gates of the UK unlock and we are able to enjoy a period of relative freedom. “I drew on that period from 16 to 25; when you don’t really know what you’re doing, what you’re about and you’re discovering yourself,“ McLellen told AnOther of the film, which features costume designs by Grace Cumming and was shot over two years.

The film accomampanies the London band's tenth album I've Been Trying to Tell You, which explores the optimism and euphoria of pre-millennium Britain. The LP, which is out now via Heavenly, twists familiar, late-90s bangers from the Honeyz to Natalie Imbruglia into plaintive and longing widescreen pop.