Stereolab Issue #37

Chemical Cords (4AD)

By Noreen Sobczyk
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 6:01pm

Stereolab don’t so much write traditional songs as they present experimental musical situations. On this, their first new LP since 2004’s Margarine Eclipse, the band continues its latter-era breezy sound with horn and string arrangements by former member Sean O’Hagan (High Llamas).

On opening track “Neon Beanbag,” vocalist Laetitia Sadier sets the album’s tone by singing, “There’s nothing to be sad about / We need nothing to feel bad about.” She sounds upbeat and happy here but soon returns to her well-known, comfortable, almost “bored of it all” vibe (albeit lightened somewhat by her effervescent phrasing). This could be a soundtrack to a summer road film with long panning landscape shots as the protagonist travels across country with images of rolling green fields and bright flower patches abounding through the windshield. Track titles like “Cellulose Sunshine” add weight to this assertion.

As with past Stereolab albums, there are a multitude of reference points for which the listener can research origins. For example, “One Finger Symphony” could be a play on Jobim’s “One Note Samba.” Despite detectable influences, a Stereolab album is, to diehard fans, often more than the sum of its parts. It serves as a primer with which the listener receives not only a new album but cultural touchstones via lyrics and song titles which lend ammunition for further exploration and discovery. It’s a musical scavenger hunt, if you will.

The album has a definite vintage easy-listening vibe punctuated by analog sounds, tambourine, and rhythmic (occasionally militaristic) drum parts. The second to last track, “Daisy Click Clack,” is an upbeat, relatively fast-paced, optimistic song. By the time the first onomatopoeia is sung, it’s already in your head. The lyrics describe the music itself (“All adjoining single rhythm into complex intermingling”), allude to the process of editing (“Snip snip with fingers”), and possibly even reveal the album’s mission statement — “Do away with skepticism dancing dancing.”

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