Stereolab: Classic or Dud

You're all wrong. They actually peaked with their first album 'PENG!'

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, November 17, 2017 12:25 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Think it's been well established that there is no "peak Stereolab", apart from people finding certain albums their best albums. The radical consistency, or their consistent radical, rules. It's what makes them so great imo.

(that wasn't a dig at you Moka, if that's how it came across, just saying <3 )

I was definitely underwhelmed by Cobra because it felt like the first time that they weren't aggressively pushing forward with their sound. It was a bit unfocused and overlong like many CDs at the time. But really, it has lots of great tracks, maybe just needed to cut some filler.

That's interesting, because for me Cobra was the first time they really delivered the jazz, a direction they'd always hinted at, something that sounded as a promise in all of their previous records, but never came into fruition until then.

I feel like there are several pretty jazzy songs on D&L and not much on Cobra besides "Fuses" and maybe "Velvet Water".

Stereolab peaked with "Hallogallo" (sorry).

They did rule live. I don’t know if they always did this, but often their sound guy would have a Moog Prodigy (I think?) that he would filter the entire band through during their freak out moments.

damn that's awesome.

i saw em on the cobra tour, they were fabulous. they ended with the last track on cobra and the house turned the discoball on for it. totally wonderful classic live concert moment for me.

my personal favorite are the ones i bought first, MAQ and cobra. but the groop have a rich tapestry of records, it really is a damn solid discography.

The time that stands out to me is ETK tour during "Percolator". When the songs winds up to the loud climactic part, it suddenly sounded like the whole mix was going through some insane analogue synth distortion. It was completely nuts!

i was not crazy about dots and loops at the time but i revisited it a few years ago and it's really damn solid, "miss modular" especially has a breathtaking arrangement.

I don't think the Prodigy had external inputs fwiw

Hahaha dont worry LBI I was joking I do love Peng! But I’m a Stereolab stan and I believe they’re the most consistent band ever.

Which means all Stereolab is peak Stereolab.

they played "the seeming and the meaning" when i saw them, that was really cool. maybe they play that one a lot?

yeah I find it strange that people can like the band and passionately hate so much of their discography. it's all great.

I think their last couple of albums were not very good but overall they had an amazing run that produced a ton of music I still listen to with great pleasure

anyone ever hear the Pack Yr Romantic Mind that featured the George Harrison sample?

i totally get it, they were a noisier and rawer band. a lot of people don't like the slickness or the flutes.. and i feel like their heavily reduced use of the distorted sister ray organ was the demarcation point. in fact, on MAQ you still have the organ but it's mostly much cleaner. ETK, the distortion is back but it's not a wall anymore, it's more of a textural/action-element.. metronomic underground notwithstanding.

re: liking the early stuff, not liking the later stuff

Their compositions got trickier and fussier and more cerebral, the drop in quality was more due to that than textural changes imo

man, it's all pretty good. i don't really see that big a difference between their early and later stuff. love me some "Peng!" the shoegaze and drone rock stuff, the "What Goes On" style motorik garage rock early stuff, the later stuff, the moogy stuff, the Clockwork Orangey stuff. it was always Clockwork Orangey stuff.

i first encountered Stereolab with "Cobra" at a Best Buy, the retro brown and orange cover seducing me like a snake charmer blowing bubbles underwater. "Dots and Loops" followed next, one time i played it on a rainy day in Florida, driving around w my grandmother, slightly high on robotussin from a cold i was suffering, in town for a crazy wedding that included my Juggalo cousins from Mass.

i still find it weird Monade opened for Stereolab, that was the tour I saw them on (Fab Four Suture).

i wish I had clear enough memories of the stereolab shows I saw (and I saw several). they were all good, I remember that.

Which means all Stereolab is peak Stereolab.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, November 17, 2017 2:37 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks to this thread i'm listening to mars audiac quintet and random transient noisebursts and the music and the memories are actually quite overpowering

GOLDEN BALL my god. john cale, eat your heart out.

the fake skip in that got me so good when I first played it

and then her voice comes in clear! *bows down*

it is sublime

I was so glad i was able to see them the one time. there's so much to explore, there isn't a single Stereolab album that i feel like doesn't deserve further listening. 'Cobra and Phases...' was i think considered a disappointment but yeah i think the PF review did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to that reputation. when i first heard it i was surprised at how not-bad it was. the disingenuousness of that review (and Brent D's entire career in music writing) is pretty obvious now, something like that wouldn't fly or be as influential today.

I thought it was the "0" from the NME that really hurt Cobra's rep at the time. I read an interview somewhere from the Sound-Dust era where Laetitia was talking about it, why anyone would bother or care that much to give it a zero

i'm still cool with the travistan zero tho

It was always the zero from the NME that pushed it to the back of the queue when I was delving into the Stereolab catalogue as a skint student, as silly as that was given that I’m sure SWells wrote the review and it was clearly a stunt review. The other thing is I really didn’t like the artwork. Haven’t listened to it in years but now I may.

So, I've been looking for an archive with videos/rare Lab songs ever since the Merlin Warp copyright strike last year. Considering I only got into them in 2016, there isn't much I had time to find, so if any of you know anything, could you please let me know?
P.S. Don't know how to deal with the fact that I'm too young to have ever seen any live Lab performances

the live project

😁

Oh wow, many thanks to you for the live project!
Also, any advice on finding fellow Lab fans irl? It's hard to do as a non-Brit and a high school student...

this has made my night

Listen, I am desperately trying to relate here, and I finally found someone else who listens to this milk to the ears.
Sure, it may seem funny, but it's also great to have finally found this thread, so I might as well ask you guys to educate me:
What are your thoughts on Aluminium Tunes?

Lots of good tracks, don't listen to it a lot these days, but back when this stuff was coming out on various EPs, it seemed like they were finding new directions every few months.

Definitely seems like it, although personally, I don't mind the transition from krautrock-style jams to more melodic variations. Obviously, Peng! and Fab Four Suture don't really compare, but they're both fun to listen to, in a way.

Pop Quiz was the song that got me into Stereolab

That was five years ago... loved songs here and there (Cybele, Les-Yper, Everybody's Weird Except Me, Anamorphose), but I only became completely obsessed a year or two ago... my favorite is Cobra and Phases by a mile... but I love them all. Such an amazing and unique band.

Moodles' live comp is so great. Outer Bongolia is great on there.

I'll check it out after I get more sleep.
I actually got hooked through The Flower Called Nowhere, and ended up sticking to later songs (Double Rocker, Strobo, most of Margerine and Sound Dust). Pack Yr Romantic Mind is great too.

Honestly though, I just love how lush and sophisticated the synths are, every song is a masterpiece of its own. Combining Moogs and woodwinds is not something you hear every day... unless it's in a Lab song! Still, I wish I could have seen the band develop and not just accept its entire history ex post factum.

Love this band, even if flappy and I will never agree that sound dust is the best ;-)

Getting into a band long after they've disbanded has its advantages - you're able to digest and accept the body of work as a whole and with context and perspective for each piece of work. As with so many bands that changed through their career, there are a lot of people that 'got off the train' so to speak when Stereolab went this way or that way. Seems like that was Dots & Loops for a lot of people. I feel lucky to have been fans of amazing bands as they developed but I went through the same things when they changed, and my attention toward and opinion of the work past a certain point waned, either out of disappointment or exhaustion.

weirdly enough, I was buying lunch today at a local natural food store and as I approached the register "Pack Yr Romantic Mind" came on and it was one of those perfect soundtrack moments, I said "I love Stereolab" to the cashier, they said "oh me too" and we chatted about them for a bit