Stereolab Overview

It's a little bit disconcerting when you realize that you actually like Stereolab. Have you really become so soft that you find this lush, easy-listening music pleasant -- and, even worse, interesting? Is something wrong with you? Most likely, you simply... [more]

It's a little bit disconcerting when you realize that you actually like Stereolab. Have you really become so soft that you find this lush, easy-listening music pleasant -- and, even worse, interesting? Is something wrong with you? Most likely, you simply have a Baroque sensibility. For behind the surface of simple rhythm and repetitive grooves, Stereolab orchestrates an intricate texture. Multiple layers of sound slide over one another and mesh together; the vocals of Laetita Sadier and Mary Hansen establish harmonic, contrapuntal relationships suggestive of Bach; and a spattering of analog bleeps and drops fills out the architecture of sound like so many ornaments and embellishments. Of course, you don't have to listen with seventeenth-century ears -- the '70s funk groove keeps most fans in a blissful, mindless haze. But there's a Baroque complexity here, both harmonic and rhythmic, that tickles the cerebellum. While references to Neu! and Can abound, Stereolab has created a distinct musical form. The combination of analog keyboards, funk-pop rhythms, the occasional drum 'n' bass backdrop, brass instrumentation, and seductive female vocals in French and English seems to come from some other time or some other world. And yet Stereolab still manages to fit seamlessly into this one. Maybe it's their harmonics that make them seem so strange and so likeable. While most contemporary pop bands base themselves in catchy melodies, Stereolab is all about intertwining harmonies, both vocal and instrumental. As one sensuous voice ascends the notes of a major interval, another descends in a different register at twice the speed. In the background, analog keyboards and guitars punctuate the rhythms of bass and drums in a contrapuntal fashion that leaves songs open, airy, and spacious. Even with all their repetitions, the songs swirl. Their rhythms comprise multiple layers through which a curvilinear movement serenely weaves itself. Stereolab's songs move like a snake winding through a field of grass, the individual blades waving in unison to the rhythms of a pulsating wind: sensuous, smooth, and disconcertingly seductive. [show less]