stereolab's cobra and phases group play voltage ...

Stereolab has long teetered on experimentalism's edge. Dirges of guitars and organ pulsate over a drumbeat that throbs along for just long enough. Laetitia Sadier's ethereal voice wanders rhythmically over the top but returns before it strays too far. Intermittent blips and scratches punctuate, but don't tear, the music's intricate fabric.

But living on the edge means constantly running the risk of falling off. Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night is the new Stereolab album, and it's as self-indulgent as its lugubrious title suggests. Clocking in at a daunting 76 minutes, it's interesting and pretty in the way only Stereolab can do interesting and pretty. But it's no landmark for a group whose delicate sound has been making post-rock waves since 1991.

That's not to say that Cobra finds Stereolab in a rut. The album opens with trumpets bleating in a scattered, free-jazz vein—a taste that flavors the entire disc. The group has a new obsession with five- and seven-beat rhythms, as well as the sassy bossa nova, but Cobra also incorporates both the droning backbeat and space-noise experiments of the group's early work and the tight melodic feel of 1997's Dots and Loops.

"The Free Design" is the album's catchiest track. Sadier's languid voice muses about metaphysics and then gives way to a brash horn section playing a slowed-down ABBA riff (it is "Dancing Queen!"). "What is our earthly task but a worthy design?" she wonders, almost inarticulately.

The lyrics may be the best part of Cobra. Sadier sings in French and English, with a spaced-out, one-syllable-per-note cadence that often misplaces emphases in intriguing ways. The words reveal Stereolab's dreamily activist bent: "For the past two hundred years the wine drunk and the freedom proclaimed/Are dubious and laughable waiting to yield a new use of life," Sadier laments on "Infinity Girl." Abstract social critiques aren't new to Stereolab; as ever, they're chanted breathily over muted beats and picturesque instrumentals. It's as if Sadier wants to seduce you into agreeing with her.

Unless you take the shortcut and read the liner notes, though, you'll have to listen long and hard to make out all the words—the group's songs subordinate sense to sound. And by the later tracks, Cobra starts to feel like an outtake: endless "ba-ba-ba"s over endless cute beats and endless sweet soft vibes. It is monotonous, despite the subtle variation Stereolab is too smart not to include. The last track refuses to end, as if the musicians had been set to playing by a conductor who left the stage out of boredom soon afterward. Cobra makes wonderful, sophisticated background music. But coming from a band whose tight, energetic masterpiece Emperor Tomato Ketchup picked you up, took you places, and showed you things, that's a near-tragedy. Without rock guitars and 4/4 beats, the dreamy, arty thrill is gone.

In the end, Cobra is a complex album but not a deep one. It tries to do too many unconventional things at once—rhythm, instrumentation, melody, style—and ends up simply listless. "Come and play...bring the stars...play in the milky night," the album's last lyrics implore. It's a nice place, the milky night, but you might want—gently—to turn down the invitation. (Elektra)

—Molly Ball

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