Let's talk about reductionism, shall we? There is a notion that one way to find truth is to peer ever closer at things until you start noticing their constituent parts, and breaking them up into groups of increasingly smaller parts until you get to the one part that doesn't break. The thinking goes that whatever you can discern about this smallest essence is the most basic, universal truth about whatever it is you're looking at: Think sub-atomic particles in physics, or anytime you hear someone talk about their fave "desert island" records. These are supposed represent the prime, most important kernels of our musical tastes, and if you remove them from the equation, we're fundamentally different.
I was listening to Stereolab the other day, wondering how they might "reduce." Even more than most bands, their music seemed dependent on being more than the sum of its parts-- especially given the general consistency in their sound for so many years. Looking closer, I can break down individual albums as either good or bad, but that's a little too general (and many fans will tell you that they've yet to actually produce a "bad" album). So, I can go down to the songs, and say whether or not they work-- but then I lose the picture of the albums as a whole. Hmm, so maybe I should actually go down further, and see if the songs on each album share something-- perhaps an instrumental similarity, or a melodic element in common-- but I find that rather than bring me closer to an overarching truth about the band, I end up with dozens more questions than when I started. And I'm not exactly sure how any of this relates to the emotional rush I get from them at their best.
As Stereolab's 10th full-length, Fab Four Suture, makes clear, there is an extremely thin line between revealing your essence and revealing nothing at all. Although it sounds exactly like a latter day 'Lab album should sound (there I go trying to break down again), I find it maddeningly hard to tell you why except in terms so basic that they're almost totally useless: Laetitia Sadier still sings like Laetitia Sadier; the Farfisa still sounds like a Farfisa; the songs still sound like exotica spliced with sunshine psychedelia and krautrock. That last point may sound like I'm giving you some good, hard info-- but remember that it applies to just about every other Stereolab album as well. Overall, I'm less taken by this record than, say, last year's Margerine Eclipse or 2001's Sound-Dust, but am having a bitch of a time deciding why.
So, let's reduce a bit, starting with the songs. Out of 12, I can only hear a few that would stand out on previous records. The book-ending, two-parted tracks "Kyberneticka Babicka" are models of efficiency and refinement, and sound like golden milk pouring down out of the same blue sky that gave us the Beach Boys' "'Til I Die" and Philip Glass's great early piece Music in 12 Parts. Minimalism never sounded so pretty, all stuffed with harmony vocals and a heavenly chord progression. "Get a Shot of the Refrigerator" isn't quite as distinctive, but does do some nifty tricks with the beat, showcasing a particularly funky side of the band at the bridge.
Conversely, there are lots of songs that seem interchangeable with dozens of others in Stereolab's catalog: "Eye of the Volcano", with cooing Marxism from Sadier and trombone counterpoint is Cobra & Phases redux; "Vodiak" is more energetic, but the melody and harmony accompaniment are textbook for the band, and the up-tempo groove could have fit in unnoticed on Mars Audiac Quintet or ETK. Analog-synth heavy tunes like "Widow Weirdo" or "Plastic Mile" seem like outtakes from 2000's First of the Microbe Hunters, itself an EP that sounded stuffed of outtakes. But the question is if the worst I can say about Fab Four is that it sounds too much like Stereolab, how can it be bad? I mean, I like Stereolab!
The crux of reductionism is that it never actually adds up to the whole picture. Fab Four Suture doesn't inspire me because I rarely actually have to hear it-- stepping back, my ears tell me that I have, in fact, already heard it countless times before. The songs don't so much flow into each other, as exist as vague siblings, joining hands if not necessarily contributing to a higher bond. There is nothing intrinsically bad about it of course, but the album is consumed by the already menacingly "not intrinsically bad"-ness of their canon. Stereolab have produced more good music than most bands I know, but over time, I'm coming to the realization that it isn't necessarily localized in any one place. That makes it hard to recommend any particular Stereolab album over another, much less Fab Four, but it also leaves the band a perpetually open door for fans.
