A Stereolab interview from 2008

(Originally published in The Stool Pigeon)

It’s a sobering thought, but when Stereolab released their first record back in 1991, Margaret Thatcher was still in power and Nirvana’s Nevermind had yet to break big.

Stereolab didn’t fit in then. And they don’t fit in now, as they approach the release of their 11th album (not withstanding a shelf full of compilations) the brilliant Chemical Chords.

You see, Stereolab care intensely about music. And they think deeply about it. This, for example, is co-founder / co-songwriter Tim Gane talking about the promo copies of the new album, which, in a slap in the face to internet pirates, came with all songs cut off at around the two-minute mark.

“In the US a lot of people said they liked the way that the songs ended suddenly like that.” Gane laughs. We’re sat on a wall outside the Brixton Windmill before the band’s “secret” gig at the start of June. A kid is doing wheelies down the road in a particularly distracting manner but Gane looks lost in the musical chat.

“They expect some kind of messing about on each record,” he adds. “I actually quite got into the idea of doing that for real, doing a record where things did really stop. What could we do with it?

“The download problem, one way to solve it, you send one version out and when the real one comes out, it’s a totally different version. Why can’t you do it?”

Well, why not indeed? I want to agree with him and most probably do. In fact it’s only reading back my notes at the end of the night that you realise the very obvious pitfalls of such a plan slapping you in the face.

Of course Gane probably wouldn’t care for such inconsistencies: years ago he proclaimed that it was better for a band to be interesting than “good”, a view he subscribes to, to this day.

“Be different,” he urges. “Be unique, be something new and then try and make that something good as opposed to being very proficient. Attempt things. Try things. That is at the heart of why I like creating things.”

Which seems like as good a time as any to mention Chemical Chords, the band’s new effort comprising 14 tracks of “purposefully, short, dense, fast pop songs”, according to Gane. That’s pop, incidentally, in the sense of Motown and 60s girl groups in Paris cafes; pop as in fizzing cola pop that lodges itself in your brain that you never want to leave.

“That was kind of deliberate,” Gane admits, taking a deep draught on his beer. The sun is shining brightly now in a way that suits the Stereolab feel. “I was very interested in making the tracks short but very tense. A lot of 60s pop songs, within the three-minute form with a lot of things going on.”

But things are never that simple with Stereolab. “There was a series of obstacles that I set up,” Gane adds. “But sometime we just go with the flow. I find seven-minute tracks a bit boring.”

The grizzled Stereolab fan may be excused a moment of disbelief here: the self-styled “groop” has a handful of seven-minute plus art monsters in their catalogue, from Emperor Tomato Ketchup’s majestic opener Metronomic Underground, to the locked groove drone of Jenny Ondioline, a tracy that could quite happily double or even triple its 18-minute playing time without ever exhausting this correspondent.

But this is Gane’s point: Stereolab are, in the immortal words of John Peel talking about his beloved Fall “always different, always the same”. Always the same because every song Stereolab have recorded is instantly — insistently — recognisable. Always different because the band have incorporated everything from wonky disco to sunshine bossa nova in their music over the years.

“People say we have an identifiable sound,” Gane shrugs. “I can’t change it. It’s done naturally and I am not going to inhibit it.”

The idea, he explains, with the new album was to build tracks from the rhythm upwards, without relying on the guitar chords that have given a motorik whoosh to so much of their output.

“I was just trying to change things and upset things a little bit,” Gane explains. “But conversely they ended up sounding like us.”

Of course the music is only part of the Stereolab charm. The band’s lyrics, too, coming from the pen of French singer and writer Lætitia Sadier are truly amazing. Consider this example, from the band’s dazzling single Ping Pong.

“Bigger slump and bigger wars and a smaller recovery / Huger slump and greater wars and a shallower recovery / Don’t worry be happy, things will get better naturally / Don’t worry, shut up sit down, go with it and be happy”

You what? A sarcastic takedown of the capitalist system in a pop song. And that’s the bloody chorus as well. And if it sounds like it might be clunky, well it isn’t at all. And then there’s this, from Fractal Dream of a Thing on the new album: “Humanity is split between masters and servants,” trills Sadier over a lurch pop backing.

With such lofty concerns, the flash of fashion is, you feel, unlikely to trouble Stereolab’s weighty brains. But that is not to say that the band is on a sideline. Over the years everyone from Timbaland to The Neptunes and J Dilla have expressed their love for the group, while Lætitia collaborated with Common on his awesome track New Age, simply the best drone pop hip hop ever laid on vinyl.

“I identify with the way they make music,” Gane says of the rap stars that have clasped the band to their breast. “Rather than a band that makes songs. Like them, I tend to pick and mix. Everything is there to be used.”

And it is precisely this spirit of adventure that has allowed Stereolab to thrive, where so may of their peers (Tortoise? Mouse On Mars? Labradford?) have slunk off to the experimental pop graveyard. They’ve outlasted Thatcher. They’ve outgunned Nirvana. And you can expect them to be happily art rocking away when the sun eventually goes supernova.

“It is a bit unreal,” Gane admits of the band’s 17-year plus history. “But I’m not looking back on things that much. We don’t need to motivate ourselves to do this. We have just been lucky enough to have the right bunch of people to stay together.”

He’s being far too modest, of course: Stereolab are nothing other than a national treasure, the finest example of Anglo French collaboration since Concorde.

Not that Gane would ever admit it. “It goes back to the question of being in a band,” he concludes thoughtfully, returning to the question of interesting vs. good. “That in itself is not a reason for people to listen to you. You have to justify what you are doing.”