The future of Stereolab

The backing tracks get working titles, sometimes they change to reflect the lyrics, but usually not.

Well, she doesn't actually say "The Free Design" in the song. And as much as Lætitia Sadier was a doctrinaire socialist, this song doesn't seem to have socialist themes to me, at all.

Despite having heard that song hundreds of times and owning the Cobra CD with lyric sheet since it came out, I still thought "Paradise is scarce" was "Paradise is chaos", "Our earthly design" was "Or a free design", and "When the higher spheres" was "When the highest fears".

Guess I need to sit down with that lyric sheet and figure out what else I've been mishearing for the last two decades...

"The Free Design" is pretty cryptic but to me it seems to deal with a desire freedom from oppression of some sort (religious? governmental?)

What crushes our desire not to be trapped?

Capitalism, imo.

xp yeah, I'd always thought of "Free Design" as one of the rare Stereolab songs where the title shows up in the lyrics, but I guess not! Drawing a blank now -- are there ANY actual examples of this in their catalog?

"The Seeming And The Meaning"

^Yes. A few more of their earlier songs come to mind: "Super Falling Star," "Orgiastic," "Doubt," "Changer," "Laisser-Faire," "Des étoiles électroniques." Seems like they stopped doing it after '94 or so.

Also "Brigitte"

It's interesting how many of the lyrics seem to have been written with the title in mind, phonetically if not conceptually. Rainbo Conversation is a good example.

1993 Berkeley, CA (instore + club performance):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sytObArOro8

Only 950 views as of posting, I'm responsible for at least 25 of them.

Only too happy to add more

I watched part of this when it was pretty newly posted and then forgot to finish the rest. It's super cool, and bonus points for being recorded exactly one week after the first time I saw them.

Tim Gane makes a lot of interesting, in depth Spotify playlists

https://open.spotify.com/user/aciddeathpicnic

oooooh

that's gonna be a lot of digging for me. From the last few looks like he's been listening to nothing but italian prog, soundtrack and library music for ages.

thanks to these lists I now know that Aretha Franklin did a swell cover of "What A Fool Believes" back in 1980

Nice! Yeah, that Aretha cover is amazing, as is that free-improv album that his snipped-banana avatar pic is taken from: https://corbettvsdempsey.bandcamp.com/album/groupcomposing

Groopcomposing

... is in advertising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v9QzFGFhYg

The past, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKjrPs7bnco

Wouldn't have guessed that Sadier's, er, 'untutored' singing, fully foregrounded, would be a hit with advertisers. Bless.

Sadier is Kiri te Kanawa compared to Trio's "Da Da Da," which Volkswagen turned into a hit 40 years ago.

(40? Christ I'm old.)

Sadier spring 2024 North American tour and solo album

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/stereolabs-laetitia-sadier-announces-new-solo-album-tour-shares-une-autre-attente/

I remember hearing "One Small Step" and "OLV 26" in commercials, too (I think this was the early 2000s?).