Stereolab
Emperor Tomato Ketchup

THE REVIEW

It is a continuous flow with Stereolab, you can't stop to reflect, to understand what is happening, to linger on details. You just need to stay glued to the chair (better if tied) and listen.

There is no direction, no precise destination, the important thing is to run.

It's definitely the rhythmic aspect that initially strikes, with its inexorable progression, there is no escape, even your inner clock will start to keep time with the record. But trying to go deeper, completing the cardiothoracic operation, one discovers that within the thirteen tracks there is also much melody.

A record of rare completeness, probably their masterpiece. Even the tracklist is perfect, a detail not to be neglected, aimed at creating this continuum in the listener's head, with every song's end precisely and melodically intersecting with the next.

Extensive use of strings in the arrangements, though not invasively. We can't speak here of real orchestrations, but rather of punctual injections of melodic swiftness that open up to more free, airy scenarios, different from the usual.

Then let's think about the lyrics, most of which are an invitation to sociality, to being able to admit others' differences, without finding excuses to justify obtuse national logics. An invitation to look at the things we have in common rather than highlighting our differences. Stigmatizing, dividing are concepts that should be left aside. Here everything is united, compact, cohesive. "Whole" as the English would say.

Laetitia Sadier does a great job on the lyrics, enunciating every word throughout the album, the band follows her, enriching and coloring the vocal melodies with various instruments, gradually adding a piece, a brushstroke, to reach the complete work.

In this work, you can still feel the lamented Mary Hansen, the group's second very important voice (listen to "Slow Fast Hazel" to believe it), unfortunately deceased in 2002 due to a car accident. From there on, it will never be the same again, the mechanism is broken.

The more urgent electric bursts and the more atmospheric pauses that allow a few seconds of breathing are not lacking; the progressive march of "Metronomic Underground" and the finale of psychedelic velvet memory that could continue until the next record...

In my opinion, Emperor Tomato Ketchup stands as one of the most successful works of the Nineties, with its surgical perfection in balancing rhythmic inventiveness and melodic experimentation.

Stereolab are sound professionals, who in this album manage to translate into emotions, without remaining automatons of composition, for its own sake.

After all, it is known, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.