All entries for Monday 09 May 2005
May 09, 2005
Indie wet dreams, number 3: Stereolab
Doing more for lalalas then any other band known, yet at the same time apparently promoting a Marxist agenda. For obvious reasons this pushes their cool points through the roof.
They sound like no other band, whilst simultaneously sounding like a lot of bands…wait, this is going nowhere. They sound like Stereolab. All the time. Sometimes this induces frustrated screaming in the listener. NME once gave them a 0/10 album review. You can kind of see why, although the NME is of course a shit-sucking rag. Stereolab are probably not a live experience extravaganza, I don't know.
Whatever criticisms might be levelled at them, Mars Audiac Quintet remains the most gorgeously formed work of internationalist genius, and elsewhere Infinity Girl is possibly the greatest song ever consigned to existence. In fact, forget criticism, everything Stereolab ever did is pretty much perfect. Perfection might not always be listenable, but in the right frame of mind, Stereolab are pretty much flawless.
And of course, they made looking like a bunch of cosmopolitan coffee-drinkers seem cool. Quite an achievement.