The last time I saw Stereolab at Irving Plaza was about two years ago, I think, and it made
my list of top twenty rock shows of all time.  Maybe top ten, still not sure.  There was a moment
in the band’s second encore in which whatever they had been playing had turned into a kind of
postmodern, French pop Sister Ray, and it all came together: the mods and the rockers, the
feminine and the masculine, the Euro and the Anglo.  The rhythm and guitar section was
punching out the rhythm: DAH-dah, da-DAH-dah, da-DAH-dah, da-DAH-DAH like the Velvets
did and the Modern Lovers did and the Stooges did and everyone did.  The keyboards sounded
like a cooler John Cale (if such a thing is possible); and the vocals brought Stereolab’s Gallic
twist, co-opting the garage snarl and turning into something more sophisticated, but somehow
even tougher, meaner, more in-charge, for being able to be sophisticated and tough at the same
time.  The band brought in everything, importing Serge Gainsbourg and Carlos Jobim,
syncopating the rhythm, shredding the guitar – it was a transcendent moment.

 I didn’t expect the moment to be repeated, and I was right; it wasn’t.  In some ways, the
fact that tonight’s show was color-by-numbers Stereolab made me re-appreciate how special the
first concert had been.  It wasn’t just that it had been my first time seeing the band live – there
really was something in the air that night two years ago.  Ah well.

 Whatever that magic was two years ago, it didn’t make much of an appearance tonight
until (again?) the end of the show, which almost redeemed the preceding hour and a half of
relatively unenthusiastic pop.  It seemed like, unlike the creative collisions of two years ago,
Stereolab had settled for producing tasty pop confections.  They were good confections, to be
sure, but they didn’t have the bite of the earlier show.

 Actually, I realized halfway through the set that the fault may lie entirely with the sound
engineer, who just didn’t have the level high enough on Tim Gane’s guitar.  Maybe it was
intentional, maybe not.  But in any case, with the droning of the guitar relatively muted, the band
seemed more like a straight-up French pop band, with great songs and fantastic tightness, but
without the weird, multi-genre fusion jam that I loved so much.  Don’t get me wrong – French
pop is cool, and Stereolab does John Cage Bubblegum better than anyone else.  But again, until
the encore, there were only a few moments where the rock really met the pop and caused sparks
to fly.  There weren’t even many of the techno or lounge innovations of some of Stereolab’s
recent albums.  I was surprised.

 Another complaint: maybe it’s Stereolab “maturing” and trimming away all the
“indulgent” parts, but most of the songs stopped just as they were getting interesting.  There’s
nothing more tedious than a mediocre jam band reinventing the three-chord structure for twenty-
odd minutes.  But a great band can do wonders even with that formula, and Stereolab has more
tricks up their sleeve.  When they do jam out, they don’t sound like Phish; they sound like Sonic
Youth, pushing the boundaries of the sounds of musical instruments into new places.  And during
the encore tonight, that’s where they went.  They took us to a kind of plateau, and kept us there
for what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes.  The blasts of the guitar gave way to percussion;
Sean O’Hagen sitting in on Wurlitzer piano played a five-note riff that became like a mantra.
And there they were again: blurring boundaries, exploring new possibilities.  So why, until then,
did they cut the songs off after 3:35?  Give us more!  I wanted to shout.

 But only the odd asshole was shouting in this crowd.  Someone has to slap these indie
rock kids in the face and get them to move.  At least at rock shows, the most enthusiastic fans
find their way to the front.  But at indie pop shows, a mosh pit never forms, the crowd barely
moves, and everyone gets that sort of lame-ass, white-boy head-nodding thing going on.  I mean,
people pushing everyone around in mosh pits is annoying.   But this was worse.  I was
surrounded at this show by people who didn’t seem to know any of the songs and didn’t seem to
want to do anything more active than tap a couple of toes.  And I couldn’t get anywhere, because
there was no fluidity to the crowd.  There were definitely some serious Stereolab fans in pockets
around the Irving Plaza floor.  Where did all these other people come from?

 Maybe it’s a testament to Stereolab’s influence that they’re able to sell out a four night
run at Irving Plaza, and even get the straights from Staten Island to show up.  The Irving Plaza
website’s promo text for the show made a surprisingly good point: that Stereolab deserves a lot
of credit for bringing into mainstream indie pop sounds which previously had been regarded as
too cheesy for rehabilitation.  Would we have Air without Stereolab?  Would we have Belle &
Sebastian?  Let alone the dozens of other bands who are proud to be incorporating dickless pop
into their repertoire.  I remember growing up in the 80s, the cheesy sounds of “Girl from
Ipanema” or those sixties French movies seemed like the most ludicrous, decadent
extravagances.  At first, I thought Stereolab was being tongue in cheek about it.  But having
gotten to know them, and their influences, over the years, I have a whole new appreciation for the
ninths and sevenths and twists and turns of lounge music, Gainsbourg, and the like.  This is
complicated, fun music, and credit these guys with turning a generation of fans onto it.

 And I still believe, even if the pop side seemed too much in charge tonight, that Stereolab
bridges the gap between mod and rocker better than anyone since David Bowie in the seventies.
(The Irving dj played “Always Crashing the Same Car” as the band was setting up, and it seemed
the perfect choice.)  Maybe it is partly the result of the genders in the band, although surely The
Slits and Hole and Air and New Wave in general have all shown that boys can be girls and girls
can be boys in this game.  Maybe their Bowielike androgyny is part of what makes Laetitia and Mary so
goddamn sexy.  (I thought this might just be the bisexual in me, so I asked some straight friends;
they all want them.)  But whatever the gender politics, this borderland is a fucking interesting
place musically.  It is postmodern rock, nodding to the cliches of pop and rock, self-consciously
incorporating them, and transcending them.  It’s French sophistication and anglo-American
pragmatism, wine and beer, mopeds and Harleys, banging up against each other.  I for one hope
that, having brought the worlds together, Stereolab doesn’t go over to one side or the other.
 
 
 
 

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