Word: reverb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hasn't changed is the thrill of hearing where Stereolab is going next, whether it's a casting out for funkier shores or spending a night in with Burt Bacharach and martinis. The next stop on their magical mystery tour? Soul. Not James-Brown-soul, although the drawn-out, reverb ad infinitum song endings the band took to performing at the Roxy do recall the virtuoso rock-outs that end so many soul anthems. This was soul as in a little jump start, an extra pumping in the veins...
...short, Stereolab live was very different than Stereolab in the stereo lab. The band's sound is characteristically everywhere: their records run th aural gamut from fuzzy lounge-lizard pop to gritty reverb rock (and most often are a synth-washed mix of both). Through it all, though, they manage to give you the cold shoulder. Morgane Lhote's Moog must have a special dial for "disaffected": a breath of chilling ennui blows through all their music, a vague sense of world-weary aloofness that has its heart somewhere in songwriter Sadier's low-mixed lyrics...
...that reverb overkill is all good all the time. The band best known for perfect mixes of diverse and often discordant sounds should have done a better job of mixing their set list. The first half left you with that cold Stereolab feeling inside; the first few songs after "Free Design," their most recent single, showcased their new-found rock-out tendency, leaving you reeling with the overwhelming strength of their steroid-pop. But after a while it started to grate on the eardrums and sounding the same, like the never-ending conclusion to a bad U2 song riddled with...
...venue seemingly expected only a DJ and a singer. Instead, the band brought along drummer Mikey Wilson, double bassist Jon Thorne and trumpeter Kevin Davy. Poor sound, especially from the drums, was an issue throughout the show, and the first song, "Soft Mistake," had to be abandoned because the reverb was horrendous. With the worst of the sound problems under control, the band returned to stage and launched into an hour-long set, drawing heavily from their second album, Fear of Fours. Only three tracks from their first album made appearances. The dynamics of the new tracks worked well...
...idea what the hell that means. And for the gritty, hard-core beach-boy in all of us, there's the Del-fi Records web page, home of original "spy-and-surf noir" bands like the El Camino's and The Deuce Coupes, and the only label with "slurpy, reverb-drenched" compilation albums, "each one a transgenerational compendium of prime slime teen sleaze." "Fun, Fun, Fun" never sounded so devious...