Stereolab - Musical Style

Musical Style

Stereolab's music combines a droning rock sound with lounge instrumentals, overlaid with sing-song female vocals and pop melodies. Their records are heavily influenced by the motorik technique of 1970s krautrock groups such as Neu! and Faust. Tim Gane has supported the comparison: "Neu! did minimalism and drones, but in a very pop way." Stereolab's style also incorporates easy-listening music of the 1950s and '60s. Said Joshua Klein in The Washington Post, "Years before everyone else caught on, Stereolab was referencing the 1970s German bands Can and Neu!, the Mexican lounge music master Esquivel and the decidedly unhip Burt Bacharach."

The band make use of vintage analog electronic instruments such as the Farfisa and Vox organs, and the Moog synthesizer, which was featured prominently on 1994's Mars Audiac Quintet. Gane has praised these older instruments for their superior controllability: "We use the older effects because they're more direct, more extreme, and they're more like plasticine: you can shape them into loads of things." Funk, jazz, and Brazilian music were inspirations, and the sounds of minimalist composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich can be found on 1999's Cobra and Phases Group .... Several critics have commented that the band's later work, like Instant 0 in the Universe (2003) and Margerine Eclipse (2004), sound similar to their guitar-driven earlier style.

Lætitia Sadier's French and English vocals have been a part of Stereolab's sound since the beginning. She writes the group's lyrics, which tend to lean towards Marxist social commentary rather than "affairs of the heart" (in the opinion of music journalist Simon Reynolds). In reference to Sadier's laid-back delivery, Peter Shapiro wrote in The Wire that she has all the "emotional histrionics" of 1960s German singer Nico. Sometimes Sadier will just sing wordlessly along with the music. Before Mary Hansen's death in 2002, she and Sadier would often trade vocals back-and-forth in a singsong manner that has been described as "eerie" and "hypnotic". Critic Jim Harrington commented that Hansen's absence is noticeable on live performances of Stereolab's older tracks, and that their newer songs could have benefited from her backing vocals.

In interviews, Gane and Sadier have discussed their musical philosophy. According to Gane "to be unique was more important than to be good." On the subject of being too obscure, he said in a 1996 interview that "maybe the area where we're on dodgy ground, is this idea that you need great knowledge esoteric music to understand what we're doing." Sadier responded to Gane, saying that she "think we have achieved a music that will make sense to a lot of people whether they know about Steve Reich or not." The duo were up-front about their desire to grow the group's sound: for Gane, "otherwise it just sounds like what other people are doing," and for Sadier, "you trust that there is more and that it can be done more interesting."