Stereolab’s music does seem to operate much like a wordsearch. Linguistic signs and symbols fly at the listener, encoded in dazzling synths, winding garden path sentences of lyrics, and cleverly arranged instrumentation. And of course, the Groop love to play games: after fifteen years of indefinite hiatus, it took six weeks to write their eleventh album, marking their “unsolicited” return with which the wordsearch was their marketing weapon of choice (a cursory glance gleaned words like “coeur”, “ultra”, “plastic”, and, most importantly, “album”!).
And Instant Holograms On Metal Film has a lot of coeur in it. From the happenstance of touring around remasters and archival material to grabbing the album title from an Australian audio magazine lying around the studio, the band’s genuine joy of musicmaking shines through. It’s impossible not to sink into their grooves and float out on the wah, sucked into the psychedelic Stereolab portal on the introductory ‘Mystical Plosives’ via spiralling progressive synth opening sequences.
Laetitia Sadier calls it “an optimistic and empowering bunch of songs,” not just because of the big grins of tracks like ‘Electrified Teenybop!’ with explosive rhythms and bright, sweetly saturated mellotron, but through its intention to channel agency and action. “I’m a creator of this reality,” she declares with her staccato clarity on ‘Vermona F Transistor’ amid big horn hits and frothing cymbals. Even when examining the violent imagery of war economy on ‘Melodie Is A Wound’, the track is all sunshine, swaying with strums and fluttering bass riffs while drum machines punch like bubblegum beatboxing. Halfway through we’re transported into a lightbeam of impossible not to dance to, psychedelic shuffles, excitedly distorted saxophone rumbles, and infinitely rising keyboard bubbles.
Stereolab are back and on incredible form with Instant Holograms On Metal Film it really is like they never left, gifting us an invigorating, life affirming album.
