Like Van Morrison, Debussy, Warhol (or, lately, Badly Drawn Boy or Duophonic labelmates Broadcast) Stereolab is a style as much as a band, constantly evolving yet instantly recognizable whether spurting out bleep-riddled alt-pop or test-driving disco, jazz-rock, or countrypolitan.
Their latest offering, MARGERINE ECLIPSE, consolidates many of the disparate sonic excursions of the band over the past decade orb so, and continues the dual-mono funky production style they’ve embraced (and have been sculpting to perfection) from 1999’s COBRAS AND PHASES… through to 2002’s SOUND DUST. This
music is MADE for headphones. ME has the most left-right action on a pop album since Paul and Linda did RAM.
MARGERINE is as broad and gorgeous as anything the band has ever released, yet it also has stripped away the instrumental excess of recent efforts. Gone are the lush string and brass arrangements that have alternately graced their recordings since 1999 (-except for the opening track ‘Vonal Declosion, curiously enough, which sounds like fin de ciecle Lab).
This may be in part to the contribution of engineer mixer Fulton Dingley in place of John McIntire, but it would be presumptuous to deny the Groop’s involvement.
Absent as well are some of the more exploratory structures of latter-half album tracks to be found from this same period, suggesting perhaps that SOUND DUST was a peak for their investigations of transitional possibilities.
Here we find that the song is once again paramount. ME demonstrates a more concise and well-crafted approach to songwriting than anything we’ve heard from the band since EMPEROR TOMATO KETCHUP, arguably their most accessible and popular release to date. But having said that, the band still finds time in the midst of all this attention to detail to cut loose on the aforementioned ‘Vonal Declosion’ and ‘Margerine Rock’, and let the disco-flavored grooves reminiscent of the DOTS AND LOOPS period resurface again on tracks like ‘Dear Marge’, and ‘Margerine Melodie’.
Though they’re a thoroughly modern band (“one of pop’s 50 most influential” according to SPIN and the sticker in the top left hand corner of my cd), the lyrical sentiment continues to be part of the broader 60’s zeitgeist and, with the best of the sentiment from that era, completely resonant today.
One cannot avoid the images of the French riot police and the May 1968 student uprising talk of Stalinism versus Maoism,
Zabriskie Point and One Plus One.
The combination of Laetitia Sadier’s voce sfollata with the angular
grooviness of the music has always provided a distance between content and effect.The lyrics can range from social commentary (‘la demeure’ which is relevant to just about any time in the past century) to personal loss (‘feel and triple’)without ever seeming overly contrived or sentimental.
Poetry like ‘a despotic power wants to codify it’s domination
disguised as natural order, now’s it’s up to humankind to lead their fight, to create an ideal of free justice’ (from ‘Bopscotch’) would be laughable if attempted by someone else, but sung in French in Ms Sadiers wonderfully aloof style, becomes impossibly elegant, yet inexplicably powerful on repeated listens.
By representing many of the strengths of their past musical excursions, MARGERINE ECLIPSE could provide the catalyst for fans of the two broadly defined periods of the band (pre and post ETK) to find something on which to agree, or something to not fully satisfy either (you know how fanatics are).
But undeniably, Stereolab continues to evolve while remaining stylistically transcendent, like Roy Lichtenstein in the 1980’s or David Bowie in the 1990’s, and those whose love for the band is unconditional will only find more to support them here.
Au revoir Mary Hansen. Nous vous manquons |