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Rating: The English, as we know, are aesthetes. Since the days of "Sgt. Pepper" and "Dark Side Of The Moon", Albionic bands have had a sort of obsession with impeccable production, layered arrangements, and the meticulous art of studio manipulation of what is played live. Perhaps this is why, in the United Kingdom, a "garage" culture has not developed like the one that made the rock of their Overseas cousins great. At times, the price the English pay for this attitude is mannerism, formalism for its own sake, a lack of sincerity and immediacy (see also certain progressive). All these points may seem well-known and rhetorical today, but it's good to keep emphasizing them.
Stereolab too, the British duo active in the 90s led by Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier, focused everything on studio recording work, on the accurate assembly of sound blocks previously performed "live", on that fantastic arsenal of tricks and special effects that the English have never given up on to see their ambitions turned into music. Graceful and whimsical at the same time, based on a "structuralist" conception of the musical piece, minimalist yet dense, Stereolab's compositions reconcile the irreconcilable: Velvet Underground, Neu!, Cocteau Twins. Three avant-garde bands, one for each decade, coexist, without paradoxes, in the architecture of this extravagant band: the obsessive guitar strumming of the first; the relentless and pounding rhythm of the second; the ethereal warbles of the third. The alchemy is perfect, but it is not exactly alchemy: the sound sources are simply layered, allowing them to remain well-distinguishable. And if this may constitute a limitation, on the other hand, it is directly responsible for the naive charm of this music.
The introductory track of this second LP of theirs, "Tone Burst", is a sort of proclamation of the "Stereolab method": guitar ringing (at most two chords), a relaxed organ melody, impalpable vocalizations, a verse sung in the languid and dreamy tone of a Francophone chanteuse (Sadier), the harmonic texture becoming increasingly dense, bordering on cacophony, until the catastrophic finale. It’s a method not unlike the "shoegazer" one of My Bloody Valentine: only Stereolab, to the sound wall erected by the Irish masters, add a strong rhythmic component, doubling the state of hypnosis. The result is a pure, heavenly music, eternally reaching towards the light, a true "daydream", which reaches an expressive peak in the masterpiece "Crest", with a dizzying rhythm, an intoxicating merry-go-round of looped instruments, infinite sound volutes that explode into a finale as deafening as it is thrilling: we are truly at the levels of the most inspired shoegazing.
Yet the celestial visions and cosmic intoxication are only one side of the coin. In fact, feelings of neurosis, anxiety, and unease slither between the folds of these ethereal (even in their noise) textures. In "Our Trinitone Blast", the anguish is cleverly camouflaged in the keyboard stasis, but an affected voice reminiscent of "Syringe Mouth" by Mercury Rev lays bare the nerves; "Lock-Groove Lullaby" is a funeral hymn disturbed by electronic whims ala Ravenstine; a spectral song ala Nico and claustrophobia ala Suicide are dominant in "Analogue Rock", a dark cloud promising nothing good, crossed at the end by a whining falsetto capable of crumbling any residue of nervous energy. But the peak of paranoia is probably marked by "Golden Ball", with a voice that seems to come out of "Twin Infinitives", a slow and exasperating cadence, disconnected organ phrases, before the usual dream-pop sighs come to herald redemption.
Perhaps the most successful episodes are those where the two opposing moods alternate and compensate, as in "Pause", where a narcoleptic chant, accompanied by the warmth of sweet organ notes, grows and erupts into a finale marked by guitar contortions ala Dead C, from which emerge, again, pure and naive white voices; or like in the magnificent "Pack Yr Romantic Mind", introduced by a romantic synthesized accordion motif and sung by Sadier in the exhausted and sophisticated register of lounge music, but always ready for sudden changes of scenario, digressions capable of casting shadows even on a song so apparently serene and composed. These are the most creative and peculiar Stereolab, but it must be said, to be fair, that on this record there are also moments where the reworking of the past gives way to mere homage (or citation) of the band's declared sources of inspiration: "I'm Going Out Of My Way" has the same intro as "Sister Ray" (identical!), while the long "Jenny Ondioline" is nothing more than a paraphrase of "Hallogallo" by Neu!.
Overall "Transient" remains an inspired and pleasant album, a vivid testament of that "post" culture typical of the 90s, based on the use of results achieved by the experimenters of "old" music; results that become the starting point (the raw material) for the research of the new generation.
(P.S. As a genre, feel free to put "shoegazer", even though I know it will spark a storm of controversy ;-D)
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
02 Our Trinitone Blast (03:47)
Our Trinitone Blast
What you decide to be is what you are
Your only way ahead your way to go far
Your reasons that you do who you really are
The decisions in your head it will be far
Prejudice does no service to you
Break your shackles it's up to you
Be your own master owe it to you
Self-doubt inner you, I believe
It's hard in this cruel world to be who you are
It might mean hardship it might take a while
Struggle, conflict, causes they all have their power
Don't let anyone hurt your heart
Your desire...broken truths blew
But you don't see what we will use upon you
Refuse to blink when that thing wants you to
You can't take your life hypnotized
Don't let anyone hurt your heart
You have an evil side of you
We can live apart in the end
What I decide to be is what I am
What you invest with it is in my command
My reasons that you do won't ?deal? with romance
I wanna stress myself to be who I am
?Toss 'em off? is the best I can do
Why kill a man to achieve other things?
....to explain, very cruel
Self-doubt inner you, I still bleed
I don't let anyone hurt my heart
Don't want to be taken apart
I have innocence in the end
translation by David
04 I'm Going out of My Way (03:25)
To compose, and decompose, to decompose
The ebb and flow of the darkness
The ebb and flow de ma paresse [of my laziness]
To compose, decompose, and recompose
From a minute to another
From minuscule to the grandeur
To compose, decompose, I wander and I slip
Get all those ghosts out of my sight
They devour all of my might
05 Golden Ball (06:52)
The only viable sun
What we have in common
We have nothing common
I live with its companions
I live with its companions
They can illuminate
Within its commandment
To illuminate
To attenuate
To illuminate
To accentuate
For we are old fellows
Illuminate
But we are...
Like falling two in half
From visible to invisible
Into the intercourse
That illuminates
Each fragment of the screen
Put into the ball of which it's part
Observe the failing of its tendencies
There's no above there's no below
Two months..
The only dynamic sun
06 Pause (05:23)
Retrieve the past, Like a prayer, Bringing it back, Into the light, What was yesterday, Will reform today, To retrieve, Lost life, Lost loves, Retrieve, Lost words, Ideas, Overcome, Unconscious, Made conscious, Out of the darkness, Into consciousness, Made conscious, Out of the darkness, Into ...
07 Jenny Ondioline (18:08)
Life on earth is a bloody
As in the city the public wears...
I think the brilliant cast for insane realities to come
and that's a decisive battle that we....haven't we lost
I don't care if the fascists have to win
I don't care democracy's being sucked
I don't care socialism's full of sin (Or: I don't care socialism's collapsing)
The unbeatable system engenders rot
That what is exciting
Is a challenge as the new nation
but the tensions have to be creative with some time
The innocent suffer from the transformation in the (their)country
They balance asylum...down and they run you
Obviously once more it could be culture...
I bet a lot oh don't you get to...
I don't care if the facists have to win
I don't care democracy's being sucked
I don't care socialism's collapsing
The indubitable* the system is so corrupt (* this sounds like immutable on the album version)
That what is exciting
Is a challenge as the new nation
But the tensions happy but (That the tensions happy but creative are so tight)
PLUS: from the album version
Life on earth is a bloody....
In place of the...
The horrors of the war are keeping me free to...
It was like taking candy from a baby.
08 Analogue Rock (04:13)
All good things to come, All good things to come, Will come, Wellcome, All good things to come, Will come, Wellcome, See you on battlefield, When we go through the mill.
09 Crest (06:04)
If there's been a way to build it, There'll be a way to destroy it, Things are not all that out of control.
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