It’s easy to forget that it’s been more than 15 years since Stereolab released a studio album. Since the group’s reemergence toward the end of the last decade, we’ve gotten reissues of their ‘90s classics, new compilations of archival material, and even a couple of tours, all of which have kept the European avant-pop band visible. And then there’s the music: Stereolab’s mix of EZ-listening, vintage electronics, cruise-control grooves, and Velvet Underground drone has always sounded at home in any decade, from the esoteric tail end of the millennium to the sunset of the aughts, when the band’s prior album, 2009’s capable Chemical Chords dropped.
So, it’s hard to call Instant Holograms on Metal Film (out May 23 via Duophonic UHF/Warp) a comeback exactly. But it does balance a return to fundamentals with forays into new territory while making a case for the band’s continued relevance. Only songwriters Tim Gane (guitar-synths), Lætitia Sadier (vocals-synths-guitar), and longtime drummer Andy Ramsay remain from the old days, but Xavi Muñoz (bass) and Joe Watson (keys) have been touring members long enough to know how to produce the kind of chilled-out modular grooves that a good Stereolab song depends on. Tracks like “Melodie Is a Wound” and “Transmuted Matter” blend subdued digital pulses with slinky melodies and stiffly funky rhythms, elegantly recapturing the mojo of the ‘lab’s heyday, while suggesting links to younger weird-pop outfits like Magdalena Bay and Dummy.
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Sadier’s purring, intensely detached vocals, and politically pointed lyrics still take center stage: “The numbing is not working anymore / An unfillable hole / An insatiable state of consumption,” she sings in “Aerial Troubles,” over chiming keys, swaying synths, and a snaky guitar figure. Backing vocals from Muñoz, Watson (on a different song), and Marie Merlet add a contrapuntal verve not heard since the tragic death of bassist-backup vocalist Mary Hansen in 2002. Seldom have pronouncements of societal dysfunction and spiritual malaise sounded so breezy, but there’s always a little sonic darkness lurking in the mix, too. A melancholy pervades much of this material, with songs like “Immortal Hands,” which begins with a fitfully strummed acoustic guitar surrounded by a circling flock of keys, summoning the pastoral dystopia of ‘70s English folk outfits like Pentangle. Even the winsome textures of vibraphone and glockenspiel can’t dispel the hints of foreboding, but they do add a bright, rickety richness.
Though recorded in London, the album features an array of players from Chicago’s burgeoning jazz and electronic scenes, including engineer Cooper Crain from silicon zoners Bitchin Bajas, his bandmate Rob Frye on reeds and flutes, and Ben LaMar Gay on cornet on three tracks. But it has little in common with the similarly Chicago-saturated Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, the band’s abstract peak from 1999. Instead, the flutes, reeds, and other nonstandard rock instruments are primarily used to give hooks an added punch and beats some extra ballast. More than three decades into their career, Stereolab is still pushing boundaries, but they’re also locking things down.
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