Stereolab - Margerine Eclipse POLL

this could be 7 different songs

No weak tracks and a clutch of classics

vonal declosion leaps out, but could be any of the first three songs.

good excuse to spin this one again

there are several contenders, but Margerine Melodie was my immediate reaction

my favorite opener / closer combo of all their albums, the perfect bookends hymning their buddy. "dear marge" by a hair, because of that march off second movement / coda

It could’ve been a couple songs but I’m going with “Margerine Rock”

Absolutely great record, like Top 3-5 Stereolab Records great

song titling, as ever, on point

I really really really want to give Hillbilly Motobike a point for being just this perfect perfect proof of concept of the genuine audio magic that dual mono can wield. Alternatively, Margerine Rock makes me cry, I cannot emphasise enough, every time. Might flip a coin

i still don't really like the dual mono thing, it's a bit exhausting to listen to on headphones, but i made my own edit of it that reduces the stereo separation just a tad and that makes it so much better on headphones

also why are half the tracks on the expanded edition different edits? "dear marge" has its coda missing but "vonal declosion" has a whole new coda and "hillbilly motobike" is twice as long. were these versions originally on the vinyl release or something, like with sound-dust iirc?

my first instinct is probably "vonal declosion", it's such a great opener

I think they made changes like these on most of their re-releases. Not sure why. They are interesting to hear, but I wish there were remastered versions that matched the original releases without the edits. Feels like Special Edition Stereolab.

am I crazy or do a lot of the lyrics also allude to the breakdown of the Sadier/Gane relationship?

Vonal Declosion all the way!

This is one of my favorite albums by The Groop. Totally underrated.

I was playing it for my girlfriend this weekend via two bluetooth speakers running stereo so we could walk around the house and get a better sense of the mixes in each channel.

Vonal !

Astonishing album, on some days feels like the culmination of everything they ever did.

For me, that is every day :)

It’s probably a four way contest between “Vonal Declosion”, “Margerine Melodie”, “Feel and Triple” and “Dear Marge” for me, but this is basically a flawless record and I would feel sad if tunes like “The Man With 100 Cells” and “Bop Scotch” don’t get votes.

I agree this feels like a culmination record in the arc of their career.

It’s a strength of last year’s album that it calls back to this one so much, but it also means that it cannot quite be the grand summation of Stereolab that it wants to be (except perhaps in the explicit foregrounding of politics) because Margerine Eclipse got there first

Nice to see this album getting reappraised. I really enjoyed the Stereolab poll on here ten years ago, but I do remember being disappointed that no songs from it made the list. Looking back the album didn't break the top ten in that poll either.

Had to go with Vonal Declosion which is up there with my very favourite songs they've done. The whole album is just about perfect though and one of the best sounding albums I know.

Absolutely shocked that a lot of the fluff from Cobra and Phases made the list but this great album was snubbed entirely. I was wondering how I voted then realised I didn’t - there was a lot going on in my life at the time.

this has been one of my favorite albums ever for awhile (top 3 stereolab for sure). the little 'resurgence' in chatter over the last 3-4 years has been fun, here and elsewhere. i also admit i was surprised they played vonal declosion in 2019! (my favorite from this, unstoppable way to start your 'dual mono' album). wonder if the groop were making a case for the record too.

i think lots of folk had 'lab fatigue at the time of release- i can definitely understand folks checking out, probably well before this one. i woulda been out at dots and loops, personally. but i think that's for another thread

This was actually the first record of theirs that I heard, and loved. Then I heard Emperor Tomato Ketchup and was unimpressed. I've still yet to listen any further, but this album is a fully satisfying statement. Each song is a bold individual picture derived from what could otherwise come across as a limited palette.
Still deciding on a best song.

I have this on vinyl, which actually makes it kind of difficult to tell which track is which, since a few of them are a couple of tunes stitched together into one track, something they do fairly often I think

I voted Vonal Declosion as well, can't really beat that "oh my god this has got to be their best track" feeling I got within 30 seconds of hearing it for the first time, now that I've heard this a bunch more times I might actually like "Need to Be" more

imo what sets this apart from the other Stereolabs I've heard is there's just so much more going on. lots of cool skittering drum fills and switch-ups, none of those long droney bits that can overstay their welcome, it's got more music on it than most 'Lab albums but comes in at a shorter length, I dig that aspect of it a lot

"Mass Riff" and "Good Is Me" are really hitting today. If you don't know them, checkout the expanded edition of ME
.

Might as well post my review here too - adding to frogbs' point about what a miraculous effort of creation this is

I'll vote for "Need To Be" for repurposing the guitar break from "Run to You" by Bryan Adams.

What I don’t understand is why the reissue version of Vonal Declosion kills its shimmering momentum with a tacked-on coda for a full minute.

Yes, this is was a poor decision in an otherwise stellar reissue campaign.

genuinely didn’t know about the difference between the original album and the reissue! Discogs and Wikipedia have let me down

I think this is true of all or most of the Elektra reissues.