Stereolab: Sound-Dust : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For a band of sonic pack rats, Tim Gane, Laetitia Sadier and the various collaborators of Stereolab sure have their own sound. Rather than merely collecting familiar and forgotten aural treasures, this Anglo-Franco-Australian partnership whips up Velvet Underground buzz, Krautrock groove, easy-listening lightness and vintage French-pop sweetness into an instantly identifiable frappe. Sound-Dust achieves a new peak in lush, lounge-friendliness for Stereolab. Horns, woodwinds and mallet instruments purr, twinkle and twitter as head High Llama Sean O'Hagan's ornate arrangements hone and embellish the band's knack for repetitive bliss. "Spacemoth" and "Captain EasyChord" go through more mood and musical changes than entire earlier albums, and the jazzy "Nought More Terrific Than Man" even suggests Steely Dan. Longtime fans pining for bygone robo-rhythms and indie-techno fusion may be bummed, but on Sound-Dust, Stereolab favor heart over body.

BARRY WALTERS
(RS 877 - September 13, 2001)