stereolab – pop structuralists par excellence

Working in a pub, while constantly assailing you with the feeling of filling and wasting time, does at least provide you with the opportunity to listen to a lot of music and the time to think about it a little too much. This week I’ve put a lot of Stereolab back cat on the iPod and have been letting it serenade the drinkers of Stoke Newington.

And as I polish glasses and zone out to their dreamy lounge-pop I start realising what masters of structure Stereolab are. Very rarely do they go in for the verse-chorus-verse-chrous-middle8-chorus bag, instead choosing some compelling and dramatic ways to line up their bits of music. Like “A Flower Called Nowhere” (from Dots and Loops), which drifts around from one 8-bar sequence to another, with repeating vocal units surfing in on waves of stardust. And just as it’s getting a little too langourous, some divine sirens blow it all away in a series of fanfares before becoming enfolded once more. No wonder Pharrell once called this his sex music.

Stereolab – A Flower Called Nowhere

“Neon Beanbag” off their new record Chemical Chords didn’t grab me at first - seemingly a fast, quickstepping trifle with scatting, parping horns, and a slight, throwaway high-pitched vocal line. But then the sketchy morass of the first two minutes locks into a groove, and the vocal line becomes lethally catchy, and it all becomes clear. It’s a song that fussily clears a space for itself, before elegantly moving into it – genius.

Stereolab – Neon Beanbag

“Slow Fast Hazel”, with its swan-like strings and stirring, unfurling vocal melody is a highlight of what is often said to be their best album, Emperor Tomato Ketchup; its structure is great in that it gets suddenly agitated by its lyrics about progress and decides not to get stuck in the swoony meadow of a ballad but strike out into an upbeat march, before calming down, and then getting agitated again and finishing suddenly. What would be schizophrenic in other hands seems perfectly attuned to human caprice and impetuousness. 

Stereolab – Slow Fast Hazel

And finally there’s ”Cybele’s Reverie” which is definitely in my top ten favourites of all time, a song so good that they play its 2.48 length, have a funny squiggly noise for a second, and then play it over again in a slightly truncated form. Possibly the most basic way of doubling your song’s length, but one that’s enormously satisfying for its childlike simplicity, and that just knows you’re going to want it again, right then.

Stereolab – Cybele’s Reverie