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October 13, 2008
Stereolab, live @ the Fillmore, Manhattan, 10.02.2008
photos by Devon Banks
Update: The whole set can be downloaded from nyctaper. A few tracks are scattered throughout here, but please, grab the whole set over there, and support Stereolab on tour...
Stereolab are one of the last true iconic bands of the 90s alternative that are still alive and thriving. And while continually productive eighteen-year career in the music business is nothing to diminish, theirs seems less surprising than others might. There's something about the band that seems constant--a continuous wavy line emanating from a single starting point, decades ago. It's not so much that the music all sounds the same, though that's the knock on their records that you hear most often. It's more that their music has such a specific aesthetic that it can absorb exterior elements without ever sounding fully transformed. There's a steady rhythm, floating keys, maybe a few keys guitar repetitions, and those lovely, unknowable rosewater vocals. If the songs themselves span a huge gap from frothy 60s bossanova to intense krautrock, they always seem contained by an innate Stereolab-ness that's hard to quantify. For US fans, the predominantly French lyrics are a big part of the mystique. Stereolab tracks can't generally be shorthanded as "the one about..." anything in particular. "The one with the pretty, cascading female vocals" is also less than helpful. When you put on a Stereolab record, there's just this pulsing sound, this driving beat, stretching in to perpetuity. It's almost a mood made manifest rather than a single-serving idea you can put a pin in and file away. As a result, of all the bands I'd listened to consistently over a long period in my life, they were probably the one who I've granted the least defined mental image. All I get when I close my eyes is a striking French lass cruising on a magic carpet.
Entering the ex-Irving Plaza over a week ago, to see Lætitia Sadler bathed in soft light, surrounded by aging musos, seemed a bit too masculine, a tough too literal. The records seem so female, in temperament and texture. On first glimpse, it seemed impossible that Lætitia could exude enough estrogen to make it seem right. The absence of the late Mary Hansen seems huge in person, even if her high backing vocals were ably handled by some young eunuch of a man. But once they started playing in earnest, the mood was as instantly set as it always is. We were Left Bank revolutionaries one and all, taking a time out form rabble rousing to enjoy a fanciful cocktail of some kind. But there was an edge (we could be infiltrated at any moment, and forced to instantaneously rock out!). Also, the show answered a question I myself posed in a High Places review for the L Magazine a few weeks back. Of course there's such a thing as an electric xylophone. Duh, Tim Gane's got a MalletKAT Pro!
Stereolab - "Lo Boob Oscillator" (live at the Fillmore, 10.02.2008)
The song that shifted the night from an amusing bout of putting names to faces to a truly pivotal concert experience, was the epic "Lo Boob Oscillator." A standout in a truly epic discography, "LBO" has graced so many mix tapes and playlists, that it's first few seconds couldn't help trigger a deep wellspring of affection. It's early moments are impossibly light and charming, with what sounds like earnest and pragmatic advice from your Parisian sister in law balanced against "boop-up-ah-oop" noises bubbling from some whimsical vent, hidden from sight. But then it turns, and these gentle souls are immediately transmorphed into sinister Germans, locking into a single, sick groove. The band's love for Neu! spills forth, always slightly accelerating, startling the ice cream sundae sweetness of its beginning and driving it far away. Bradford Cox hugged himself, swaying back and forth on the side of the stage, blissed out. Though he speaks of his teenage heroes often in interviews, the immensity of Stereolab's influence on his band Deerhunter had never struck me so squarely. Especially in the alternately hazy, then pummeling turns of their still-forthcoming record Microcastle, tracks like "LBO" cast a long shadow.
Stereolab - "French Disko" (live at the Fillmore, 10.02.2008)
The "hits" kept coming from there. In seemingly quick succession we were given the high-minded mission statement "John Cage Bubblegum," the band's best guitar based rock out anachronistically named "French Disko," and a tough of high water mark album Emperor Tomato Ketchup's "Cybele's Reverie." As much as huge swathes of the band's back catalog register to me as a single, permeating groove, there are singular moments where construction surpasses mood. The concert gave me many, honed even further from over a decade of seasoning. Even in the loosest of moments, no one could accurately deem the band less than tight. In the most tightly focused numbers, their polish was otherworldly.
Stereolab w/ Bradford Cox- "Jenny Ondioline" (live at the Fillmore, 10.02.2008)
After gracious bows and enthusiastic claps, the band returned, as they must. The night culminated in the sustained force of 1993's "Jenny Ondioline." Cox bounded in from off-stage with golden retriever enthusiasm to play the extra drone, freeing Sadler to absently riff at a previously perched guitar. It was long, intense, and gorgeous--a distillation of the show at large. Wherever the band chooses to go from here, they can be sure that their name will always evokes something specific, vaguely defined as it has traditionally been.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at October 13, 2008 01:45 PM
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