It begins with 56 seconds of sequencers going haywire, a warning siren from the guts of the cosmos. Then, after just a few ominous organ chords, a smart and acquainted voice emanates from the audio system. “The numbing isn’t working any extra,” intones Laetitia Sadier, articulating the present sense that the whole lot has ceased to operate – even the medicine designed to maintain us distracted and supine. “Thirsty is the concern of demise… We are able to’t drink our manner out of it.” By this level within the track – entitled “Aerial Troubles” – a sometimes irresistible yé-yé groove has kicked in and the moribund state of our society in 2025 looks like one thing to be solved quite than lamented.
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Stereolab have all the time been a political band. Again in 1994, “Ping Pong” got here near smuggling a scathing critique of boom-and-bust economics into the Prime 40. “French Disko” was an empowering resistance anthem, declaring that “Acts of rebellious solidarity/Can deliver sense on this world”. Even Dots And Loops’ “Refractions In The Plastic Pulse”, the dreamy centrepiece of their current dwell reveals, drew on the libertarian socialist philosophy of Cornélius Castoriadis to insist that different futures are potential. Generally it feels as if this facet of the Stereolab oeuvre is missed – or no less than handled quite patronisingly as one other one in all their lovely quirks, alongside the French accents and the fetishisation of outmoded know-how. However at a time when neo-fascism is on the rise throughout Europe, and when even a Labour authorities is slashing welfare budgets to spice up defence spending, On the spot Holograms On Metallic Movie pushes again forcefully in opposition to this grim tide with an important blast of agit-pop.
Not that you’d essentially deduce this at first sight. Typically when bands return to the fray after an extended hiatus, they decide to play it secure and provides the followers what they assume they need, changing into caricatures of themselves within the course of. The preliminary concern right here is that Stereolab might need finished the identical factor. The paintings – by Vanina Schmitt, sleeve designer of the final two Switched On compilations – offers nothing away besides to say: sure, this actually is a Stereolab album. The title is self-referential within the excessive, as if created by reducing up and reassembling the names of earlier Stereolab information. Regardless of the decade-and-a-half hole between albums, they appear to be at pains to recommend that that is very a lot enterprise as standard. Which, in a manner, it’s: the enterprise of being a unique, extraordinary band.
The miracle of Stereolab is that their music by no means grows outdated. Since reforming in 2019, they’ve launched expanded editions of most of their best-loved albums, in addition to 5 bulging editions of their Switched On compilation collection, with none concern of listener fatigue. Maybe it’s their distinctive mixture of pop sensibility and avant-garde experimentation, the tireless quest for undiscovered chords and novel permutations of sounds, however nonetheless a lot you take heed to Stereolab, their music all the time sounds contemporary, crisp, deliciously moreish. On the spot Holograms… is not any exception, every track immediately identifiable as Stereolab whereas bringing one thing new to the desk – and sometimes metamorphosing into a very completely different track midway by. Motifs are quickly transferred from one instrument to the subsequent, making a pleasingly mesmeric impact, like a kaleidoscope in fixed rotation.
Naturally, the gear listing features a staggering array of classic synthesisers and different keyboard devices – from the Vox Jaguar and the Moog Matriarch to the obscure East German organ namechecked within the title of “Vermona F Transistor” – most of that are performed by the band’s resident boffin, Joe Watson (you don’t should have written a PhD thesis in transduction and performativity to work right here, but it surely helps). Woven into this wealthy tapestry are quite a lot of extra acoustic textures, a few of that are new to those elements. Stereolab have used brass earlier than – Sadier herself wields a imply trombone – but it surely’s by no means been performed with fairly the identical depth as Bitchin Bajas’ Rob Frye and fellow Chicago avant-jazz head Ben LaMar Homosexual provide right here. Frye’s splendidly visceral saxophone break in direction of the tip of the epic “Melodie Is A Wound” sounds prefer it’s actually ripping open the music’s shiny digital veneer to reveal the uncooked human flesh beneath.
That track is straight away adopted by the unusually folky and introspective “Immortal Palms”, pushed by a proggy, harpsichord-style determine and the purposeful strum of Tim Gane’s 12-string acoustic guitar. It’s momentarily harking back to Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” with added marimba. Then out of the blue a drum machine sputters into life, taking the track to a different dimension, earlier than it ends with peals of heat brass and bucolic flute. There are equally reflective moments secreted all through the album, even when a rasping Roobarb & Custard riff is rarely too distant.
The vocal preparations are equally creative. Whereas the band might by no means hope to interchange the late Mary Hansen, whose voice intertwined so naturally with Sadier’s, the staggered multi-part harmonies of “Le Coeur Et La Power” are constructed with the delicacy of a matchstick Versailles, with Frye’s twin saxophones including additional layers of bliss. There may be a lot to get pleasure from about this continually shimmering tableau of sounds that it might be straightforward to consider Sadier’s vocals as simply one other instrument. However her lyrics confront the horrors of the twenty first century head-on.
Take “Color Tv”. You may assume from the title that it’s a jolly piece of retro-futuristic fluff, a figuring out callback to a time when the cathode ray tube felt the portal to a brand new world. However in reality the track is a pithy, withering takedown of the sort of bogus aspirational narrative now spouted by politicians of all stripes – “a deluding promise of a center class for all” – that permits the wealthy to proceed to divide and rule. “It’s a single story/Violently imposed because the/Common narrative/Of progress and growth and of civilisation,” trills Sadier, over pleasantly chuntering methods music. But when that makes stated narrative sound ingrained and hopeless, in Stereolab’s world, a contented ending can all the time be glimpsed, if we would like it: “Open are the probabilities!”
“Melodie Is A Wound” tackles an much more sinister actuality within the type of creeping authoritarianism. “The aim is to control/Heavy arms to intimidate,” sings Sadier, calmly explaining how Trumpian ways “Snuff out the very thought of readability/Strangle your eager for fact and belief”. It reads like a lyric to be snarled over serrated post-punk guitars and apocalyptic kick-drum thuds. However naturally it’s a breezy slice of Bacharach-style pop with an prolonged, accelerating coda.
Sadier comes armed with options, too. “Discover with out concern the rhizomic maze,” she instructs, in direction of the tip of the album. “Knowledge, religion, braveness are mandatory.” And if it nonetheless sometimes appears like she’s reciting situationist pamphlets, there’s a extra relatable, therapeutic facet to “Esemplastic Creeping Eruption”, which invitations you to discover your “interior world” to “restore completeness” as a frisky rhythm periodically dissolves into vibraphonic bliss, “the place the place darkish and light-weight contact”.
“Transmuted Matter”, in the meantime, attracts on The Path Of The Rose, a religious instructing attributed to Mary Magdalene, to claim that paradise is inside our grasp, if we’re ready to provide ourselves over to like. “Totally human totally divine, entwined,” sings Sadier, enraptured. “Inform me what do you see by the attention of the guts?”
In a world the place startling numbers of individuals appear to have misplaced religion in themselves and humanity as an entire, turning as an alternative to damaging political nihilism, On the spot Holograms… affords a sort of handbook on how to withstand the negativity and reconnect with society. Alternatively, it’s one other super-fun Stereolab album stuffed with obscure synth blurps, nifty lounge-pop tunes and gnarly motorik wig-outs. Both manner, you received’t be disillusioned.
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