Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night - Stereolab

'Vonal Declosion' is a top-10 Stereolab track for me.

otm

^^^

Margerine Eclipse has a handful of tracks I really love, and a bunch more that bore me

I have always thought this one and Sound-Dust are really underrated; not least of all for the very David Axelrod-reminiscent string arrangements throughout. The first section of 'Emergency Kisses' springs to mind immediately as a very much perfect musical moment in that regard.

i think the keyboards, or the keyboard+production combo, are pretty important on cobra phases. i've been thinking for a couple days about how to describe it and it's not right but it occurred to me that dylan's 'wild, thin mercury sound' gets in the right ballpark

In the liner notes, Tim makes special mention of the Farfisa electric harpsichord, which they began using a lot starting with this album.

Cobra is far from their worst. Basically post Margerine Eclipse they ran out of gas. Chemical Chords sounds like demos, and Not Music is an absolutely unceremonious last album.

Chemical Chords has a beguiling sweetness, girl group bounce, post-'60s on the shoreline sunsets, love heightening just as its potential recedes, triumphal sadness. Such gushing probably points to ultimately personal associations; and as we've discussed elsewhere, Sadier hated making it... but I love it dearly. In retrospect, with the brevity of its songs, it seems to be accelerating toward a conclusion. (This makes Not Music rather anticlimactic, I'd agree, though there are some dandy bits on it too). 2008 was no longer Stereolab's moment, and so their backward gazes seem more bittersweet.

Cobra was also my first "new" 'Lab album and holds a special place for me as the sole album I ever bought at a midnight release-day sale. I hope I still have the little promo poster I got with the groop lying down in a circle. The album seems a clear candidate for their most ambitious, somewhere between its ornamentation and its length; it's not quite as endlessly relistenable as Dots & Loops but it's pretty neat.

I am a little disappointed that the liner notes suggest that the title should be "Italian Shoes/Continuum" rather than "Italian Shoes Continuum".

― with hidden noise, Thursday, September 19, 2019 10:06 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Italian Shoes Continuum is almost too much as a title - like something a Stereolab Title Generator would come up with

― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, September 19, 2019 11:29 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

actually this really helps me bc italian shoes is the first downer for me on the album and to know that i should hear this as one fused song rather than two (since i usually don't pay attention to the track breaks) gives me some motivation to try to see the value in italian shoes

with the slash it's more like, a strange occurrence that must be explained, how the shoes lead to the far more abstract and compelling phenomenon of a continuum

the spiracles also pretty draggy