Part of the fun of following Stereolab over the years has been following the declarations of mastermind Tim Gane, who has an uncanny ability to plant contextual seeds of albums in advance. The albums don't need it necessarily, but from the beginning-- when Stereolab paid prescient tribute to the likes of Neu! and Martin Denny-- on through to their present triumphant twilight, Gane has always come across as an ideal kind of character: a mix between a thoughtful critic and an excitable collector geek who gets off on trying out the ideas he hears on records he loves. Before 2004's Margerine Eclipse, Gane talked about using puddles of rhythm as the basis for songs that sparkled like reflections. For the new Chemical Chords, he's spoken of making good on an affinity for Motown.
To mention it more than once is to overstate the degree to which Chemical Chords actually does sound like Motown, but another part of the fun of following Stereolab is listening in for subtleties of inflection. With a sound so omnivorous and open to influences that span decades and styles (not to mention planets), the Stereolab discography has become a series of churning extrapolations on a steadfast set of ideas. And Chemical Chords counts among the best of those extrapolations, no matter how familiar that original set of ideas has grown in time.
"Neon Beanbag" opens on a jaunty note, with organs on harpsichord settings and Laetitia Sadier doing her scat-minded best to summon the spirit of doo-wop. The Motown influence is hearable in the way the guitar slides around from chord to chord, in swing-time and not embarrassed to fall a bit behind the beat if it means racking up style points. "Three Women" follows with a little extra wiggle and the kind of bulbous two-note bass-line that might have come out of Detroit in the days before funk changed things.
Horns figure into many of the songs on Chemical Chords, all of them intricately arranged but most surveyed rather impressively as accents more than as subjects themselves. To that end, the whole album has a lightness of touch that makes it sound warm and comfortable, especially after the sad weight evident on the also-excellent Margerine Eclipse. The songs sound tossed off in the best way: not as sketches that could have benefited from more time or care, but as songs that just presented themselves in the studio and submitted to being laid down in simple terms.
"Valley Hi!" is a driving pop song with a catchy lean, with Sadier singing in a trance of falling melodies delivered with her special brand of disinterested zeal. "Silver Sands" bounds along with circles of loopy xylophone. "Nous Vous Demandons Pardon" sounds like three or four different moody Emperor Tomato Ketchup-era tracks fitted together in a deft assemblage. And then there's "The Ecstatic Static", a cosmic rendering of Brian Wilson chords pushed along at a pregnantly plodding tempo, with strings falling out and martial drums angling in: It draws on every era of Stereolab's past without seeming concerned with anything more than what might sound cool in the next measure.
