Instant Holograms on Metal Film by Stereolab
'Instant Holograms' on Metal Film by Stereolab
In its ever-shifting first era from 1990 to 2009, indie band Stereolab treated Burt Bacharach, the Velvet Underground, French Yé-yé pop, Brazilian variations and electronic experimentation as nearly equivalent sources for its own permutations of a nebulous form that slowly acquired the nebulous term “post-rock.”
In its second era, Stereolab began with a 2019 tour that celebrated the first era and continues with Instant Holograms on Metal Film, 13 new original tracks that cohere as if daring a listener to believe that music so baroque could be so vital.
Founding members Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier—perhaps the most fruitful English-French collaboration in history—co-write 11 of the tracks, with Gane handling the other two on his own. Andy Ramsay (who began with the band in 1992), Joe Watson (2004), and Xavi Muñoz (2019) complete the current lineup.
Surrounded by a bewilderingly dazzling multiplicity of instrumentation, from trombone to the Hohner Symphonic 30N electric organ, Sadier sings, in Gane’s native tongue and in her own, with the unmistakable Gallic cool she’s brought to all her work and with a tenderly gimlet eye toward a world often controlled by unkind people and bad ideas.
Yet Stereolab consistently brings beauty to each song, whether that beauty fits psychedelic go-go boots over funk beats (“Transmuted Matter”), lends Carpenters-lush bliss to Yo La Tengo-style alt-rock (“Flashes from Everywhere”), or transitions from burbling lounge to skronk sax to express-train electronica (“Melodie Is a Wound”).
When Sadier and her harmonizers aren’t singing, the band and myriad guest musicians stay intense with the ironically titled, unironically focused “Electrified Teenybop!” or the dots-and-loops intro, “Mystical Plosives,” and its allusions to soundtracks composed by Wendy Carlos.
If one attribute, beyond the ornate style, connects Instant Holograms to Stereolab’s first-era long-players, that attribute is discontent. Within sounds as bright as candy coatings, there is uneasy listening.
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Buy Instant Holograms on Amazon here.
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