Stereolab Album Recommendations

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Stereolab

[#] Chemical Chords (2008)

Dull dull stupid irritating forgettable wallpaper music from Mars.

Reviewed August 9, 2020

(This is an album that was previously covered on the Rediscovering! Click the link in the table to read a wordier and possibly less accurate version of my feelings on this album.)

Stereolab are a phenomenal example of avant-indie bullshit, beloved by people whose sole interest in music is novelty. I'll give them this much: there's probably not a lot out there that sounds like their specific brand of retro-futurist elevator music, but that's a good thing. Apparently Chemical Chords was inspired by Motown, but the thing about Motown is that the songs were catchy, driven by a funky instrumental and a great vocal. Stereolab, evidently with an inability to write decent songs, go for the "maddeningly repetitive" angle instead. Grooves that go nowhere? Check. Musical variety? They didn't need that. Great vocals? Not here! This is actually one of the few albums I find deeply unpleasant to listen to—see the title track for the single worst use of false endings I've ever heard on record.

Frankly, it's when they reach a slightly lesser plane of awfulness that the full extent of how garbage Chemical Chords is becomes apparent. "Silver Sands" finally has a hint of a lead melody and mixes up the tone slightly (from elevator music to department store music, but credit where it's due), but the vocals of Lætitia Sadier are so forgettable, so polite, so background, and the lyrics might as well not even be real words. It's novel, sure, but I can't fucking stand listening to it. Sorry! Style over substance apparently gets you everything in indie music circles, but not with me. As I put it when I covered this one on the Rediscovering: "The only thing I wanted on the first listen was the occasional B section or slow song; the only thing I wanted on the second listen was to turn it off."