Stereolab wears many hats – French pop, krautrock, jazz, funk, and a dozen genres in between – and after more than three decades together, you can feel that shared history in the way they command a stage. In support of Instant Holograms on Metal Film, their first studio record in 15 years, Stereolab took their instruments and blippy machinery across North America, landing at San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom one brisk autumn night.
As I hurried down the marble staircase to the opulent venue, the distinctive hum of layered synthesizers met my ears, immediately followed by an uproar of cheers. I drifted through a crowd of 50-somethings who once fought for spots at the barricade but now gathered contentedly near the bar, and found some space towards the back. Onstage stood Stereolab, in all their full glory, shrouded in dancing purple light. Frontwoman Laetitia Sadier swayed gently at center stage; alongside her were long-time member Tim Gane on guitar and electronics, Andy Ramsay on drums, Joe Watson on additional keys, and Xavier Muñoz Guimera anchoring the sound on bass. The five-piece band opened with “Aerial Troubles,” a bouncy, multidimensional track from their new album. The crowd went wild, and Sadier exclaimed with a smile “Yes, we’re here! And we’re doing this together!”.
“Let’s revisit the past,” said Sadier before launching into “Motoroller Scalatron” from the band’s 1996 record Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Futuristic cyber graphics drifted over the purple curtains, the bass and drums reverberated throughout the room, and the floor beneath me pulsed with each note. Another older track, “Peng! 33” from their 1992 debut album Peng!, followed. Its lyrics draw from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, echoing the novel’s surrealist themes through Stereolab’s hypnotic pop minimalism. Sadier sang with rhythmic freedom over motorik pop-rock instrumentation as the crowd bobbed and danced in unison.
The show featured an impressive variety of instruments in addition to the standard guitar, bass, and drums, including but not limited to: a trombone, a tambourine, a series of vintage keyboards, and some other mysterious machinery I couldn’t make out. At times, Sadier would deftly switch between singing to playing the trombone without even taking a moment to breathe. The band played songs like “The Flower Called Nowhere” and “Household Names” with layered blips, bloops, and twangs that gave the music a vintage, Boards-of-Canada-y flavor, reminding me of the sound of an old arcade game starting up. I’m not sure where these sounds were coming from, but my guess is the aforementioned mystery machines that obscured the small bespectacled man at the back of the stage.
Following a stellar performance of fan favorite “Cybele’s Reverie,” Stereolab exited stage left, only to come back a minute later for two more encore songs. “Do you want some more?” teased Sadier as she picked up her guitar. The band played “The Way Will Be Opening,” a politically charged track from Peng! that Sadier dedicated to “all those oppressed and silenced.” The track was softer and slower than the rest of the show, allowing its powerful lyrics to cut through to the crowd. After a final performance of “Immortal Hands” featuring a kickass trombone solo, Stereolab bowed gracefully, flashed peace signs, and sent the crowd out into the night.
Review by Gaby Smith, photography by Jaida Berkheimer
