There is an old adage that says "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." If something gets the job done, messing with it will probably foul everything up, right? Sure, in our rapidly advancing technological world of today, devices and methods are reconstructed pretty often, but the main principles of the design or practice are always upheld in the final product.
Such is the Stereolab way. Over the past fourteen or so years, Stereolab has been churning out albums like a factory pumping out updated products: the same effective entity each release, but each time upgraded to accommodate the changing needs of the changing times. Like a factory, they have a trademark that marks their entire catalogue. This mark is their definitive sound, which consistently permeates through all of their albums and makes Stereolab's sound uniquely their own.
This factory analogy extends to Stereolab's musical and lyrical style. Their style is very mechanical, heavily influenced by NEU!'s stark rhythmic and textural landscapes, and NEU!'s chugging motorik beat. Repetitious and hypnotic, their music couldn't work any other way, as it's so congruent with Laetitia Sadler's and the late Mary Hansen's siren sing-song styles. Many of their songs' lyrics convey abstract interpretations of Marxist principles: the unfortunate dependence of society on institutions and establishments, the exploitation of the proletariat by the higher classes, et cetera.
On Stereolab's latest album, "Fab Four Suture," the practice of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is as alive and well as it has been on their past albums. "Fab Four Suture" opens with the dizzying and hypnotic "Kyberneticka Babicka Pt. 1." A throwback to tape-reel manipulation in psychedelic music, the track repeats a theme over and over again until the tension breaks and moves on to another similar theme to do the same. The album also closes with this very same track, except this time it is entitled "Kyberneticka Babicka Pt. 2."
There are 10 tracks between the "Kyberneticka Babickas," all of which sound just like Stereolab songs should. "Interlock" sounds like a Brigitte Fontaine take on hard-bop with echoes of John McEntire in the drumming. "Eye of the Volcano" and "I Was a Sunny Rainphase" both boast sixties snare-laden minor-key choruses punctuated by blippy spy-film verses. "Whisper Pitch" is probably the strongest track on the album. Somber and meditative, it is an ambiguous ode that is equally likely to be indebted to either a person or to consumer fetishism. "Vodiak" sounds conspicuously like a lost Add N to (X) song with its multi-timbral kooky synth parts and go-go drumming.
All in all, "Fab Four Suture" is just another notch on Stereolab's expansive belt. It's an example of why the aforementioned practice of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" may work well in industry, but does not necessarily work in music. The thing about music is that ideas that work for a while, even groundbreaking ideas, eventually become ineffective and stale. Ideas that start out as fresh, functional and far from broken lose their appeal as they pass out of context. The problem with "Fab Four Suture," as with Stereolab's past few albums, is that Stereolab is still hanging onto a once-exciting sound that has become predictable and unsatisfying to listen to now that it's been redone and rehashed so many times.
Hopefully, Stereolab isn't on some incurable downswing of quality, because their earlier albums are truly entrancing ("Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements," "Mars Audiac Quintet," and "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" are particularly awesome), but, alas, it seems that their charming pragmatism may have run its course.
