Stereolab are an Anglo-French avant-pop band formed in London in 1990. Led by the songwriting team of Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier, The two were romantically involved for fourteen years and are the group’s only consistent members. Other longtime members included 1992 addition Mary Hansen (backing vocals, keyboards and guitar), who died in 2002, and 1993 addition Andy Ramsay (drums). The group’s sound features influences from krautrock and 1960s French pop music, often incorporating a repetitive motorik beat with the use of vintage electronic keyboards and female vocals sung in English and French. Their lyrics have political and philosophical themes influenced by the Surrealist and Situationist art movements. While performing, they play in a more feedback-driven and guitar-oriented style. From the mid-1990s, the band began to draw from funk, jazz and Brazilian music.
In January 1994, Stereolab achieved their first chart entry when the 1993 EP Jenny Ondioline, entered at number 75 in the UK. Their third album, Mars Audiac Quintet, was released in August 1994. The album contains the single “Ping Pong”, which gained press coverage for its explicitly Marxist lyrics. The band focused more on pop and less on rock, resulting in what AllMusic described as “what may be the group’s most accessible, tightly-written album”. The group issued an EP titled Music for the Amorphous Body Study Centre in April 1995. The EP was their musical contribution to an interactive art exhibit put on in collaboration with New York City artist Charles Long.
The band’s fourth album, Emperor Tomato Ketchup (March 1996), was a critical success and was played heavily on college. A record that “captivated alternative rock”, it represented the group’s “high-water mark” said music journalists Tom Moon and Joshua Klein, respectively. The album incorporated their early krautrock sound with funk, hip-hop influences and experimental instrumental arrangements. John McEntire of Tortoise also assisted with production and played on the album. Katharine Gifford was replaced by Morgane Lhote before recording, and bassist Duncan Brown by Richard Harrison after. Lhote was required to both learn the keyboards and 30 of the group’s songs before joining.
Released in September 1997, Dots and Loops was their first album to enter the Billboard, peaking at number 111. The album leaned towards jazz with bossa nova and 60’s pop influences. A review in German newspaper Die Zeit stated that in Dots and Loops, Stereolab transformed the harder Velvet Underground-like riffs of previous releases into “softer sounds and noisy playfulness”. Stereolab toured for seven months and took a break when Gane and Sadier had a child.
Their sixth album, Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, was released in September 1999. It was co-produced by McEntire and American producer Jim O’Rourke, and was recorded with their new bassist, Simon Johns. The album received middling reviews from critics and peaked at number 154 on the Billboard 200. An unsigned NME review said that “this record has far more in common with bad jazz and progressive rock than any experimental art-rock tradition.” In a 1999 article of Washington Post, Mark Jenkins asked Gane about the album’s apparent lack of guitars; Gane responded, “There’s a lot less upfront, distorted guitar … But it’s still quite guitar-based music. Every single track has a guitar on it.”
Stereolab’s seventh album, Sound-Dust (August 2001), rose to number 178 on the Billboard 200. The album also featured producers McEntire and O’Rourke. Sound-Dust was more warmly received than Cobra and Phases Group…. Critic Joshua Klein said that “the emphasis this time sounds less on unfocused experimentation and more on melody … a breezy and welcome return to form for the British band.” Erlewine of Allmusic stated that the album “[finds the group] deliberately recharging their creative juices” but he argued that Sound-Dust was “anchored in overly familiar territory.” After a ten-year hiatus, the band reunited for live performances in 2019.
