Stereolab - Sound-Dust
(Elektra)
You toil for nearly a decade fighting fascism with your transient noise, trying to make the world a better place by acting as disconnected from it as possible. All this so that some person who hasn't even been to France can discount the sound of your newest treatise as simply being more of the same.
Me, I've been to France. I know all about how you have to be careful not to step in the dog poo because the dog poo is everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Having been to France not once but twice, I feel fully qualified in saying, "Stereolab's new album Sound-Dust is more of the same." However, I come to praise Stereolab, not to slaughter the dying Gaul. "Hallelujah," I say. Hallelujah, Sound-Dust is more of the same.
It must be hard working at the Stereo Lab. When you try not to just give people more of the same old kraut-pop, recruiting a more jazz-influenced producer, the critics call foul, saying your new sound is far too cold and crystalline. It's not much of a surprise then that Sound-Dust is not an extension of or improvement on the more jazz-based sound of the Cobra and Phases... album but rather a complete negation of it. "Nous sont aussi froid?! Sacre blue!" Instead, Sound-Dust is a plump French pastry, filled with the warm cream of life, a sweetened, relaxed version of their last millennium albums that seems to fit well with Gane and Sadier's roles as a decade-old rock band and nouveau father and mother.
Mr. and Mrs. Lab have become so sweet that they even find a big enough break in their socialist propaganda to write a genuine love song. In "The Black Arts," the ladies of the 'Lab sing "I need somebody, I feel so lonely, I need somebody, to be family." It's a simple statement and sincere sentiment on the power of having a child, but coming from chic artistes who more commonly sing in incomprehensible baby talk or in languages most of their audience doesn't understand, it's a powerful statement on where the band is as people and musicians.
Naturally, the birth doesn't just bring out love and a feeling of completeness from the band. It also brings out more targets for socialist rhetoric. The bureaucracy of insurance companies and doctors are natural targets and are both given their due, although, of course, it's hard to tell that if you just listen to the music, which is the warmest, softest music Stereolab has ever created. Working off of Cobra and Phases..., the electronics continue to be de-emphasized, instead utilizing more acoustic instruments. Unlike the previous album, though, instead of using these horns and strings to create jazz-isms and sharp-edged structures, with O'Rourke's help, the band creates simple, lush washes of sound--a deeper commitment to their Sergio Mendes and 60s pop influenced side. This is not the ice down of Cobra and Phases..., but also not the jacuzzi of bubbles you'd find on prior albums; Sound-Dust is a bubble bath in the truest sense of the words--soft and enveloping, never pulsating or vigorous.
Hearing the first half of "Captian Easychord" (as is presented on the teaser EP), two things hit you, washes of trumpet and--what's this--lap steel. Persistently upbeat, this is the Stereolab you remember from Emperor Tomato Ketchup, only with that lap steel mixed in, which manages to work quite well, used with minimal twang. Once the percolation subsides, though, the song continues for three minutes with a bed of keyboards as soft as goose down that creates an easy, coasting sensation much less intrusive than the standard Stereolab bounce. This soft-n-easy aura is there for much of the album.
The album ends with "Les Bons Bons des Raisons," a double entendre of sorts, translating to "The Candy of Reason" but sounding like it should translate to "The Candy of Raisins." Laetitia Sadier's lyrics state the simple fact that chocolate from an aunt is sweeter than reasoning. While a slow, drifting piano melody plays with Mary Hansen singing "Bon-Bon, Bon-Bon," perhaps these words and sounds, more than any description I can come up with, are the perfect summary of where Stereolab is as a band.
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