Playing Against Stereo's Type

Stereolab

Stereolab

In a word: cool. Stereolab is too cool for you. Last Sunday, everyone's favorite Boston booty palace, the Roxy, was the unlikely host to the London-based experimental rock/electropop band best known for what they have titled "ambient boogie." Their music is a heady mix of everything from Muzak to French femme-pop, from acid jazz to industrial German kraut-rock, tied up into neat little alt-rock packages with the silky ribbons of Mary Hansen's lead vocals.

The fusion of diverse elements extends to their members as well, and Sunday's performance really pointed out how similar their striking visual presence is to the striking aural presence of their songs. On the one hand there's Australian-born Hansen, the gamine, androgynous face behind Stereolab's characteristically sultry French vocals. (She's possibly the only person in music today who can make a complaint about faulty sound systems sexy: "Does anyone else hear that rumble?") Her look-but-don't-touch attitude makes her akin to the too-hip aunt of Bjork and Winona Ryder, a coy mistress of equally playful music.

On the other hand is Laetitia Sadier, Stereolab's all-purpose singer-songwriter-guitarist, who took center stage on Sunday.

You could compare her to Austin Powers' Frau Fraubissina, although you might get a jackboot to the stomach. The creator of Stereolab's cold-hearted sound storm appeared in hardcore military-chic: high collar, olive-drab frock, tight mug. But somehow, when she and Hansen stepped up to their microphones, it was all okay: Sadier's harshness and Hansen's softness mixed together as well as Stereolab's other songwriter (and founder) Ti Gane can mix Muzak and German post-punk, the listless vocals carried along like a beauty queen in a homecoming parade of sound clips, acid jazz and dippy pop.

As emblematic of the music as the band' s physical appearance may be, the thrill of actually seeing band members in person is transitory at best. Stereolab is no stranger to personnel changes. What hasn't changed is the thrill of hearing where Stereolab is going next, whether it's a casting out for funkier shores or spending a night in with Burt Bacharach and martinis. The next stop on their magical mystery tour? Soul. Not James-Brown-soul, although the drawn-out, reverb ad infinitum song endings the band took to performing at the Roxy do recall the virtuoso rock-outs that end so many soul anthems. This was soul as in a little jump start, an extra pumping in the veins.

In short, Stereolab live was very different than Stereolab in the stereo lab. The band's sound is characteristically everywhere: their records run th aural gamut from fuzzy lounge-lizard pop to gritty reverb rock (and most often are a synth-washed mix of both). Through it all, though, they manage to give you the cold shoulder. Morgane Lhote's Moog must have a special dial for "disaffected": a breath of chilling ennui blows through all their music, a vague sense of world-weary aloofness that has its heart somewhere in songwriter Sadier's low-mixed lyrics.

The Stereolab that appeared on stage at the Roxy, however, was completely different. Droning chords, insistent melodies, catchy syncopations, chanteuse vocals drowning in endless waves of synth-wash--all the innovations that Stereolab fans have come to expect --were all there. The difference was that Stereolab rocked. The aloof, polished, heavy-handed studio sound that many know the band by was shattered by gushing torrents of feedback and throbbing backbeats your ears just reveled in. From the minute they took the stage until the minute they left, the band pumped out and endless lifeblood of sound, filling the vaulted bordello-ballroom space of the Roxy to capacity.

Not that reverb overkill is all good all the time. The band best known for perfect mixes of diverse and often discordant sounds should have done a better job of mixing their set list. The first half left you with that cold Stereolab feeling inside; the first few songs after "Free Design," their most recent single, showcased their new-found rock-out tendency, leaving you reeling with the overwhelming strength of their steroid-pop. But after a while it started to grate on the eardrums and sounding the same, like the never-ending conclusion to a bad U2 song riddled with screeching feedback and twisted bass-lines stretched out to the point of anguish. Who said there was no such thing as too much of a good thing?