At a certain point, getting stuck at JFK isn’t so bad. By midnight, the crowds are gone. After 2 a.m., most of the few travelers left are sleeping. I don’t know how they do it. The chairs at the gates are uncomfortable and I can’t bring myself to stretch out on carpet that people have been trampling over all day. So, I pop in my earbuds and finish an assignment that’s due on Monday while bobbing my head along to the Bob Vylan and Kneecap albums on my laptop. Then I remember that Saint Etienne’s latest, and last, album, International, came out on Friday, so I look it up, buy a digital copy, and tune in. 

International is a perfect finale for the long-running, British indie pop trio and, really, the ideal music for this very strange night. Saint Etienne have spent the past 35 years making music, and creating an image, that blurs the past, present and future. Their breakthrough single, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” was a cover of a Neil Young song reconfigured with a Burt Bacharach-meets-Stone Roses sensibility. From there, Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell made mod pop and house jams, flirted with Eurodance and experimental electronic music and played with psychedelic and ambient sounds, all the while showing a real reverence for both the most commercial and underground histories of 20th and 21st century music. As International is an intentional final album, it draws from all of the influences that have appeared in Saint Etienne’s music since the dawn of the 1990s.