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Stereolab - Chemical Chords
That Stereolab can continue to craft inventive, brave and infectious music whatever their creative mindset is testament to the band's determination to live life on the cusp of mainstream banality. 'Chemical Chords' - the band's first proper album since the release of the sublime 'Margerine Eclipse' back in 2004 - is precisely what you've come to expect from Stereolab; a gentle thrill-ride that rattles dreamily between the rails of experimentation and pop.
Although the band's eleventh album there's nothing staid or comfortable about this impressive body of work; one can be sure that very few of their albums have been put together through Tim Gane messing about "with a series of about seventy tiny drum loops" (as he has been quoted when talking about the creation of the LP) and 'Chemical Chords' carries that brave new creativity across its 14-strong track-listing.
As ever, Laetitia Sadier's vocals are delicious whispers that twine the punchy drums and the baroque-pop brass arrangements together like a fine thread, but there's a tightness at work here that's rarely been seen in Stereolab's illustrious canon. 'Silver Sands' for example, exhibits such a pulsing and taut rhythm that you exit the song feeling a miniature sponge hammer has been pounding away at your eardrums; it's a delightful - if somewhat strange - sensation. But its opener 'Neon Beanbag' that offers the best clues to Stereolab's new creative direction; sparse electronics, circling drums and gentle horns that are gradually wound tighter and tighter. It basically sounds like Belle & Sebastian stretched rigid across a medieval torture device. Wonderful. Further highlights include the oddball wig-out of 'Pop Molecule (Molecular Pop 1)' and the brass-heavy summer-breeze of 'Self Portrait with Electric Brain' which bounces along sounding in parts like the theme tune of some crayola-drawn cartoon series.
As a collection of songs 'Chemical Chords' quickly becomes far more than the sum of its parts. You come to realise that this is not just another Stereolab album. Instead this is Stereolab as you love them best; in creative freefall and enjoying every fleeting minute of it.
In 'Chemical Chords' Stereolab have not only crafted a wilfully brave new record, they've also added a new creative vision to their history that will inspire them (and countless others) well into the future.
Stephen Jasper
Although the band's eleventh album there's nothing staid or comfortable about this impressive body of work; one can be sure that very few of their albums have been put together through Tim Gane messing about "with a series of about seventy tiny drum loops" (as he has been quoted when talking about the creation of the LP) and 'Chemical Chords' carries that brave new creativity across its 14-strong track-listing.
As ever, Laetitia Sadier's vocals are delicious whispers that twine the punchy drums and the baroque-pop brass arrangements together like a fine thread, but there's a tightness at work here that's rarely been seen in Stereolab's illustrious canon. 'Silver Sands' for example, exhibits such a pulsing and taut rhythm that you exit the song feeling a miniature sponge hammer has been pounding away at your eardrums; it's a delightful - if somewhat strange - sensation. But its opener 'Neon Beanbag' that offers the best clues to Stereolab's new creative direction; sparse electronics, circling drums and gentle horns that are gradually wound tighter and tighter. It basically sounds like Belle & Sebastian stretched rigid across a medieval torture device. Wonderful. Further highlights include the oddball wig-out of 'Pop Molecule (Molecular Pop 1)' and the brass-heavy summer-breeze of 'Self Portrait with Electric Brain' which bounces along sounding in parts like the theme tune of some crayola-drawn cartoon series.
As a collection of songs 'Chemical Chords' quickly becomes far more than the sum of its parts. You come to realise that this is not just another Stereolab album. Instead this is Stereolab as you love them best; in creative freefall and enjoying every fleeting minute of it.
In 'Chemical Chords' Stereolab have not only crafted a wilfully brave new record, they've also added a new creative vision to their history that will inspire them (and countless others) well into the future.
Stephen Jasper
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