WORDS —
LUCY KENNEDY
On a drizzly Thursday winter’s night, I headed to the Powerstation for a night of electronic synth, guitar-heavy 60s-French-pop-inspired music from the iconic Stereolab.
Stereolab is an indie Anglo-Franc band with a cult following. Over the years, it has been composed of many different members, with only two consistently in the band – lyricists Lætitia Sadier and Tim Gane. The band formed in London in the 1990s, and is currently on tour for their latest album Instant Holograms on Metal Films, their first album since reuniting in 2019 following a nine-year hiatus.
Opening for Stereolab was Wellington band Glass Vaults. Much like Stereolab, Glass Vaults is grounded in sharp percussion – including a cowbell and maracas, the lightness of which were grounded in resonantly thrumming base. They played their 2020 single ‘Boys on Boys’, which was extremely enjoyable and received well by the crowd.
Stereolab opened their set with the same sparkling synth beginning their newest album, from the track ‘Mystical Plosives’. Sadier stood powerfully, pulling on her guitar with its green glitter-covered strap, nodding approvingly at the crowd. Each time Lætitia Sadier pulled out her trombone, it was met with whoops of joy from the crowd – the brass strength of it added a jazz-like, militant feel to songs that have always been about the resistance of oppression. The songs of Stereolab don’t end in a stark cutoff, but rather dissolve and degrade, instruments dropping off and diluting into the purist, essential elements of sound.
At the end of the set, Sadier left the stage with a smile, telling the audience that it was up to us what happens next. Accordingly, the crowd hollered, whooped, stomped, and clapped in a cacophony until the members returned to the stage for an encore. Before playing, Sadier asserted to the crowd that power to the people only works if we take action, a kind of call-to-arms and testament-to-unity. The final song of the night was one I’d been holding out for – ‘Cybele’s Reverie’, a song beginning with a string arrangement that evolves into an upbeat, punctual, sweeping melody. The band didn’t play ‘French Disko’, which I had been hoping for due to the marvellous lyrics, “Though this world’s essentially an absurd place to be living in/ It doesn’t call for a bubble withdrawal… Well, I say there are still things worth fighting for.”
As I researched for this review, I came across the Reddit page for Stereolab fans. One user posted succinctly all I needed to know: “I flew to Paris from Canada to see them. I wept. They good.”
I wholeheartedly agree.
