Welcome to September. I’ll kick off not with a song, but with a video:

You may have noticed my continuing obsession with Saint Etienne if you’re a regular reader. You may have also noticed the complete lack of Saint Etienne news this year. The silence is deafening: even last year the band managed to put out two releases, though both were only really available via the fan club and were somewhat less than essential—Nice Price was a collection of castoffs and alternate takes, and What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? is the mostly instrumental soundtrack to the Paul Kelly movie of the same name. The latter release offers a clue to what Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have been up to lately.

Paul Kelly is one of Saint Etienne’s frequent collaborators. A filmmaker by trade, Kelly’s done several projects with the band, originally culminating in an epic attempt to shoot a video to accompany every song on Saint Etienne’s 2002 ode to London, Finisterre. Unfortunately only “Action” received a video in the end, the record label having nixed the rest due to cost concerns. Saint Etienne’s recent history with record labels has been tumultuous to say the least, and problems with Mantra and the recently deceased Sanctuary have thwarted a number of Saint Etienne projects.

Kelly’s contributions managed to escape the cutting room floor in the end, though; the footage Kelly and the band had shot for the rest of the videos was eventually made into a film, which was screened at various festivals and eventually released on DVD. What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? was film number two from the collaboration. And then the Southbank Centre asked Kelly, Saint Etienne and producer Andrew Hinton to become artists in residence for a year as the centre renovated some of its facilities.

The result was This Is Tomorrow, a documentary on the renovation of the Royal Festival Hall. At the end of Saint Etienne’s year in residence, they showed the documentary at the re-opening of the hall and played the score live with a full orchestra and choir, plus a number of student singers and band performers for good measure. That performance was apparently the first of many, as the film (and hopefully the band) will be touring around the UK and around the world in the coming months. Unfortunately, details on the nature of the tour are maddeningly scarce, as is word on the release of the film and the accompanying soundtrack. It’s very likely 2007 will end without any new music from Saint Etienne in the shops—but as the video above shows, it doesn’t mean the band hasn’t been busy.