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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)
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