Music

March Album of the Month Club

Serge Gainsbourg on acid

“Competent Groove” by Saraansh Tandon in Wikimedia Commons

A significant branch of my musical journey in the late ‘90s to the early aughts can be traced by Serge Gainsbourg’s influence: Beck, Air, Portishead, MC Solaar, Massive Attack, Yo La Tengo, Clinic, and present-day bands like Beach House and Tame Impala.

My generation enjoyed an exciting shift in electronic music through chill out, trip hop, drum and bass, idiosyncratic, Moog-laden avant pop, and experimentation from indie rock bands. Straight-up synth pop associated with the 80s took a back-burner to something earthier and groovier. It is from this the groovy diagonal striations visible on track 4 of the LP that I made my choice for March’s Album of the Month Club meeting.

Having more time to select the next album was a lesson in trusting myself, since I came back to my very first instinct after needless deliberation. I considered albums that would have been amazing to discuss but were more intellectual choices than the biographical ones that have themed our meetings. My choice feels warranted as it does risky.

Why risky? While infinitely listenable, the album may not make the same impact for first time listeners on a singular, casual listen. I don't know. That’s where hopefully some of you come in. What is guaranteed is that it evolves with you upon each listen.

What is distinct about my choice is how the sound is a time capsule as much as it is out of time with anything else released around 1997. But listening to it then, as now, always makes sense.

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Stereolab’s 1997 masterpiece *Dots and Loops has rewired my aural assumptions about genre and the accessibility of high art. While Dots and Loops — a British-French effort produced by American talent, *is a concept album of the highest order, it tickles my intellect and is the warp and weft of my musical being emotionally.

Instead of relating an epiphanous personal moment related to Dots and Loops, it has rather been a trusted friend over many years. The entrancing melodies have been a backdrop for subtler emotions migrating like watercolours across a page and across years and identities: university kid, girlfriend, despondent retail worker, traveller, career woman, wife, mother, emerging poet... the album is part of all these people and its impact has not changed.

I envy the long-haired, awkward young adult in blue polyester who had her first several listens, but the album is still nearly as fresh sounding decades later. One could get lost isolating the digital manipulation of loops from Laetitia Sadier’s beguiling bilingual vocals drenched in an immersive background of two drum kits recorded on a 24-track dumped into Pro Tools. The instruments range from hypnotic choral sections to funky horns and bubbling marimbas. For me, it is thinking music and it is a living, buzzing, breathing, organic thing.

Dots and Loops is not in your face but its liquid, entrancing time signatures almost derail while they cradle you in bossa nova, krautrock, psych, indie vibes with inflections of a Polanski score and Curtis Mayfield’s “Move on up” — all culminating in a sonic tapestry unique to Stereolab.

Inspired by avant-guard film techniques, the album drops trippy, complex arrangements over anarchist messaging while remaining highly approachable. Indeed, Dots and Loops could be called a surreal situation, a chill revolution. It is an experimental album that eases you in with the suaveness of a Gainsbourg classic. And I’ve come to defend that rewarding edge of experimental meets muzak.

Retrospectives on Dots and Loops — turning 25 this year — concur that the album is distinctly out of its time. So instead of appealing to the “timeless”criterion, I thought it more interesting to choose an appropriately Stereolab-esque “out-of-time” anachronism of sound. It is future pop with a retro palette. It fucks digital sound with an analog mind. Swimming above the subversive, anarchist lyrics criticizing the cultural anesthetization of late capitalism, it is a complex and delicate revolution in carbonated, undulating tones.

For more background, there is so much to go over and I promise to cover some more in a follow-up closer to our meeting. For now, Pitchfork’s 5-minute Liner Notes series features Dots and Loops, which is loaded with helpful context and sound clips from the album.

[embed]Explore Stereolab's Dots And Loops in 5 Minutes The British-French band Stereolab was somehow of its time and from another time altogether. On their fifth album…pitchfork.com

Meeting details:

Riff March 6th Album of the Month Meeting

When: Sun 6 Mar 2022 16:00–18:00 Eastern Time

Join Zoom Meeting: us02web.zoom.us/j/83683711581?pw… (ID: 83683711581, passcode: FNP32+ck)

Join by phone(US) +1 346–248–7799 (passcode: 07045128) Joining instructions

Meeting host: gtbarr@presby.edu

Please invite your friends!

There are a lot of new names and I am working on a book, so please forgive any omissions: Terry Barr Nicole Brown Kevin Alexander Rob Janicke David Acaster If Ever You’re Listening GONGENHUM Soundclub Mag Alexander Briseño Keith R. Higgons Alan Asnen Pedro B. Gorman Pierce McIntyre Christopher Robin Jeffrey Harvey Steven Hale Bonnie Barton S.W. Lauden Zsófia Vera Danielle Loewen Frank Mastropolo Paul Combs Kathryn Dillon Gary Chapin Alex Markham JP Timko JL Matthews AJ Wiseman Nelson George Sude Hammal Jeffrey Harvey Chris Zappa Sarah Paris Reuben Salsa Critical Country

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*Jessica Lee McMillan © 2022*