Comeback | Stereolab: Against the "good old days"

Tim Meier: Stereolab are back on record and on stage. And we were there.

Marlon Grohn: Returning isn't exactly true. Stereolab were back on stage in 2019 and then again in 2022.

Meier: Do we really want to start with this music editor jargon right away?

Grohn: Why not? The new record continues Stereolab's work in form and content, as if they, or the times they refer to, had never passed away. And at the same time, the lyrics are still politically relevant.

Meier: The eras you're talking about are by now. Since "Chemical Chords," their last album in 2008, the world hasn't changed for the better. The broad cultural offerings à la Viva Zwei, "Spex," or Diedrich Diederichsen's anarcho-Bolshevik Derridaism in record reviews without reference to the record itself—all that is gone. While we grew older and thought we'd live in the 90s forever, Stereolab tried to eke out a legacy into our 2000s and 2010s. But then we weren't paying attention for a moment, and that cosmos was gone, and with it, ourselves.

Grohn: He comes alive again at concerts and on records. It's like a kind of spiritual "blood doping" (Diederichsen) with music. Now we're standing here, in front of the stage, with hundreds of people, many younger than us, and we're wondering: How do they all know Stereolab?

Meier: The 90s are back, I'm young, you see it everywhere. Whether it's youth or Edeka, everyone is trying to revive the "best decade." Ironically, of course, and even more depoliticized than the era itself was back then. And Stereolab, of all people, isn't catching on: their new album "Instant Holograms On Metal Film" shows that while milieus disappear or change, the art they produced doesn't. It's not about singing the praises of a "good old" time, but rather pointing to a state that allowed more opportunities for rebellion. Stereolab's references to experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage , after whom a song is named, Rosa Luxemburg ("Socialism ou Barbarie" is the title of an album by singer Lætitia Sadier ), and the Résistance (in their old hit "French Disco").

Grohn: But in interviews you also said that you don't really have much to do with Marxism.

Meier: I think it's part of the band's strategy to say something like that. At the level of such artworks, it doesn't matter how deeply the artist is immersed in the subject matter. The aesthetic communication of the theoretical suggestion is more important than the "authentic" competence in the source of the reference.

Grohn: Stereolab's music sounds quite socialist, even beyond the lyrics. They seem very relaxed, but incredibly self-confident. And also combative.

Meier: It's a mystery to me how they keep doing it. I don't know any band that plays these simultaneously sad and happy, even encouraging songs with such provocative ease. It's almost a bit outrageous: comforting sounds, sometimes a dream-pop melody that ripples along so harmlessly – and then the lyrics like those from "Melodie Is A Wound": "The goal is to manipulate/ Heavy hands to intimidate/ Snuff out the very idea of ​​clarity/ Strangle your longing for truth and trust/ Choke, wisdom, sapience and prudence."

Grohn: I thought that after the whole pop-intellectual bubble burst, it would have an impact on how people talk about music. But no, missed opportunity. After 1990 , the political left said: Utopia is ruined, let's rethink socialism. But the pop discourse, it seems, didn't want to learn anything from the demise of "Spex," etc., or even address it. Stereolab, however, found a possibility in the subject of this pop criticism, in the music itself.

Meier: It seems to me that the offer to create the Stereolab of pop reception is like the work of art in a museum: What's really interesting today is no longer the painting itself, but the artist's life, their personality, their relationship to others, the context from which they feel they must create this very art. In a museum, too, it's no longer the paintings themselves that are of interest to critics, but rather the space between them: the people, how they look at the works, who they are, what they say about them, what they want. Just as we're having this conversation now, on the occasion of the new album.

Grohn: Ultimately, pop music has always been "just" a means, a tool that aims for "more" and "further": The musicians provide the template, but you have to live it yourself. Art always shows that it's not enough to simply receive it—the work is only complete when you go to the concerts yourself, sing and dance along.

Meier: Would you say that Stereolab created the last work of art, as Malevich or Duchamp supposedly did?

Grohn: Boris Groys says that in the "ultimate work of art," only "the hidden, invisible, unrepresentable rhythm of life, which could only be pointed to through writing," should prevail. That actually applies to Stereolab, if writing is replaced by music. Pop must begin to become its own, self-contained work, thereby sustaining its own critique, making the critic's criticism superfluous.

Meier: Only if Stereolab truly created the absolute, the ultimate work of art, then we can't talk about it. Otherwise, the work would no longer be absolute.

Grohn: But we just sang along and cheered at the concert. Doesn't that count as the conclusion of the work? We're practically inside the work, so the printed review wouldn't even be necessary anymore.

Meier: We are part of the work – we also have to communicate, in the form of a discussion, otherwise Stereolab's art will not reach the world.

Stereolab: »Instant Holograms on Metal Film« (‎Duophonic Uhf/ Warp/ Rough Trade)