Music Review: Stereolab
Sound Dust is mostly throwaway space pop missing a cosmic pulse. Instead of making groovy music, on its twelfth album the multinational quartet merely contemplates the nature of grooviness, and turns out a nerdy, noodling album that seriously lacks mojo.
Whereas on their terrific Dots and Loops, instrumentation seemed to fit the purpose of making music, Sound Dust comes off as a series of compulsive experiments with retro-lounge gadgets layered over a collection of limp drum beats. Nothing ever particularly takes the fore, there aren’t more than a few melodies that you don’t immediately forget, and their usually bold grooves sound strangely tentative.
Singer Laetitia Sadier’s voice has also never sounded more dispassionate-or out of tune-and the music lacks the solid bass bottom that propulsed songs like “Refractions in the Plastic Pulse” and “Prisoner of Mars” through her multilingual, pseudo-poetry ramblings. Instead, tinny pianos and tepid drums pass the time on piffles like “Les Bons Bons des Raisons” and “Captain Easychord.”
Moments of originality appear only fleetingly, like in the eerie, New Wave waltz that opens “Spacemoth,” or the briefly refreshing reversal of mood halfway through “Captain Easychord.”
The sweet, Euro space-pop melodies we’ve come to expect from the band pepper the songs, but they’re even more disposable than usual. Stereolab fans will merely find diluted what they loved on the band’s classic albums.
***
Popularity: unranked [?]
Related Posts
Print This Post