Guitar music is currently dominated by bands either of the bland persuasion - Coldplay, Travis etc - those versed in the art of rehashing - The Strokes et al - and metal by, well, take your pick from any of about 400.
They share a limited sonic pallet, and one that has dominated since man discovered sound. You know the deal: drums, bass, guitar and vocals. Love it or hate it, it's been all-pervasive. Alongside the likes of Radiohead, The Beta Band and more recently Elbow and Orange Can, and after a decade of invention, Stereolab continue to break that monotony.
Take for example 'Sound-Dust''s 'Captain Easy Chord'. Within the first minute, Stereolab leap from bass piano stabs to country twangs. There's funk horns, wind chimes and electronic breakdowns. The changes pass more like the scenery on a wondrous bus journey than images in some electro-shock therapy that a description on paper might suggest.
And that's Stereolab's wonder in a nutshell. They stand with a view of 21st century's music's lush and vast sonic landscape and are here with an outstretched hand to lead you through it. And better than that, they still manage to drive on the comfy cruise bus of pop along highway Stereolab. It's a clever trick.
Laetitia Sadier's vocal melodies soar, so that even when you get two hints of classical minimalist Steve Reich in the first two tracks, there are still tunes to hum. Not that you can't hum Steve Reich tunes, it's just they get a bit dull, what with the one-chord-change-per-quarter-hour structures.
Recorded in Chicago with Tortoise affiliate and experimentalist-about-town Jim O'Rourke, the sounds here glisten and glow. Now long gone are much of the droning guitar-based excursions of the first few albums, with Laetitia's aforementioned soaring much easier to pick out.
All in all, especially on tracks like 'Hallucinex', it's a happy, glorious celebration of light and warmth. Hell, she even sings (something like) "happy, happy, happy love" on 'Double Rocker'.
What ever happened to indie miserabilism? Who cares.
