Pitchfork

On one hand, you have a group that have clearly said everything they wanted to say, whatever it is they wanted to say. This is a pretty common criticism of bands by people who probably stopped listening to the records years ago-- though to be fair, if that's your idea of a flaw, Stereolab are deeply flawed. It's certainly something I've considered from time to time. Why it should come up more often with this band than, say, Radiohead, is another question. Apparently, "ruts" are not inherently bad, and it turns out the majors have been demonstrating this for as long as "pop" meant "popular." No, I don't think the fact that Stereolab have been making variations on the same record every year for almost ten years is the reason they briefly fell out of favor. This is fashion, you understand, and if anyone should understand the stylish generation, it's the Lab.

Of course, Stereolab never really fell "out of favor," per se, but getting two people to agree on the value of their indie-pop stock is a tall order. The main problem is that taking stock of the band's place within a contemporary context assumes that they were ever really "contemporary." Even back in the days when they might feasibly have been playing "indie rock," all of their musical cues were throwbacks to the vintage post-rock power of folks like Neu! and Raymond Scott. Their imagery was all fluorescents and retro-futuristic schemata, even before their music became the same. Their Marxism was about ten years too late to really be cool-- but as they consistently demonstrate, their kind of "cool" is, at best, a paradox.

Furthermore, and perhaps most on point, their music hasn't actually gotten any worse over the years. That may sound like a backhanded compliment, but in the faces of a significant faction of former Stereolab fans who think they've gone soft, it's practically blasphemy. You know, in merely quantitative terms, the ratio of good songs on their records is about the same as it was during their perceived mid-90s "peak," and I would argue that their music is actually more interesting now. Their preference for lounge and faux-acid jazz textures tend to polarize people, which I guess is a good thing considering my fear of a pending acid jazz revival.

All of this brings me to Margerine Eclipse. As a reward for sticking with me this far, I'll get right to the point: if you hated Cobra and Phases, Sound-Dust and Dots & Loops, you'll probably have little need for Stereolab's eighth proper full-length. All of the hallmarks of latter-day Groop are here: harpsichords, silly (yet great) 70s analog synthesizers with futuristic roto-bossa beats, and plenty of dreamy harmonies to fill out the barely existent song structures. Mary Hansen's presence is missed when you hear Laetitia Sadier spot herself on the high vocals, though it's easy enough to imagine her back in there if you want. All of it is very easy, which is a perfect way to sum up a new Stereolab record: easy to predict, easy to criticize. And easy to like.

I should come clean in that I never hated post-ETK Stereolab, so the familiar movements of Margerine Eclipse aren't really a disappointment as much as yearly revisits from old friends. When the band released an uninspired Instant 0 in the Universe EP in 2003 (coming off their first year without new studio material since they started making records), it looked momentarily as if the train was stopping. Now, the notion seems funny because listening to bright, buoyant tunes like "Le Demeure" or the fantastic opener, "Vonal Declosion", reminds me that they'll probably keep going like this until they're gone.

The aforementioned "Vonal Declosion" rings in the new record with a flash and the trill of the Farfisa, as the bass dances below Sadier's well-worn rhythmic French nothings. What's more, as the band transitions into a section sounding ripped out of Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking" and Mary Tyler Moore Show incidental music at once, supermarket strings enter on the left and reveal Stereolab's true calling for delivering Perfect Pop for Then People. "Cosmic Country Noir" pulls out the classic robotic Wurlitzer drum machine patterns for more antiqua-groove, though the main body of the song is more reminiscent of The Free Design than Kraftwerk.

"Margerine Rock" doubles back on Stereolab's way with pop history by sounding most similar to their own music, circa Mars Audiac Quintet, even if guitars can't quite mask their now low-key charms. More fitting seems the poignant "Dear Marge", with Spanish guitar, gliding Farfisa, percolating synth and Sadier's counterpoint vocals so obviously being transmitted to Hansen somewhere off in the cosmos. The song is nostalgic, but handled with such care that its sweetness never approaches saccharine sentiment, or worse, stale lounge-pop. They ensure the song's fate by galloping out on a disco-funk plane right out of an Earth, Wind & Fire record. (Okay, so restraint isn't really Stereolab's thing, but damn it, they just have such good taste in sudden disco flashbacks.)

Ultimately, Margerine Eclipse probably won't be received as a "return to form," other than to say it's perfectly in accord with everything they've given us for the last several years. It won't gather them new fans, etc. etc., though I think that's an unfair way to judge a record. Times have changed, and the band hasn't, so you might just as well praise them for sticking to their ideals instead of latching onto some trend (Tim Gane does dancepunk, anyone? Bad example, I'd listen to that). The best way I can think to hear Margerine Eclipse is as another in a line of accomplished, eternally pleasant and intermittently brilliant Stereolab records. Really, it's just that easy.