Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French, German and Brazilian psychedelia, Radiophonic Workshop sound effects, 1960s library music – which back in pre-streaming, pre-discogs days of the early 1990s when they started out you had to be a proper nerd to have any grasp of.

Lyrics were shot through with references to obscure Marxist theory, situationism, obsolete electronics catalogues and so on, with layer upon layer of absurdism and earnestness interleaved to the point you could very easily get queasy trying to work out when and out of what they were taking the mick.

However, there was one thing that held it all together: the fact that, even playing fiddly rhythms in odd time signatures, the band could really groove. And it turns out that that’s still the case, even with a 15-year gap between LPs. In fact, this is some of the most upbeat music they’ve made, further continuing their trajectory of gradual stripping out of indie-rock guitar to make the sound sparer, daintier and more mobile. There’s still some of the “motorik” Krautrock relentlessness that has always underpinned their work, but the overwhelming mood here is of retro-pop sweetness and light – leaning heavily into sounds that can’t help evoking 60s visions of soft-focus or kaleidoscope lens skipping through meadows.

As ever, it’s completely impossible to separate kitsch and sincerity in their approach – more than ever, in fact, as their lyrics have taken several steps further into the psychedelic, mystical and otherwise esoteric, with a lot of seeming references to quantum physics, gnosticism and suchlike. Just as before, sung in reedy tones, this can all feel a bit arch if you’re not in the mood… and yet, if you let it wash over you, just as often the strangeness of the songs merges into the lightness and whimsy of the music and becomes completely delightful, even magical. The greatest moments of all are where horn sections come in as on “If you Remember I Forgot How to Dream Pt. 1” and take the grooviness into outright soul/funk territory – there’s even a short diversion into 1980s funk on “Melodie is a Wound” – suggesting whole new areas of exploration for the band. Throughout, though, the groove is there, and if you catch it in the right light it can be as bizarrely fun as anything in their catalogue.

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Listen to "Aerial Troubles"