A REVIEW:

PENG!- STEREOLAB (1992)

The first swell of synthesis drags you into Super Falling Star. Sort of like falling into a collapsing star. A constant whine embodies the vacuum of space. It's such a simple song instrumentally, but it retains a bizarre sense of complexity behind it, made evidently clear by the chorus double-melody. The chorus is easily the best part of the song. Laetitia's vocals are beautifully crafted, an exact definition or blueprint for Stereolab's melodies.

Orgiastic lends itself to a more shoegazey feel. Someone in the YouTube comments said, "My Bloody Stereolab". Perfectly accurate. It's got this organic drive, a lush kind of power. The guitars are like 95% wet. Barely any dry. There is, again, a double melody through the whole song, singing at you from both sides of your headphones. Stereolab is best experienced in true stereo. The end growls and twists with a guitar feeding itself back into its own pickups and the drive finally peters out.

The title track(?), Peng! 33, is a magical reminder that there are incredible things happening in the world. Current context suggests otherwise...but we have to seek out the sublime in the ordinary. Find the light in the dark. Peng! 33 is an optimists worldview in a nutshell. A hopefulness for the world's potential, barring the inability of man to seize what will make him great. The band's philosophy, at least in Peng! 33, is an appreciation for the fruitfulness of the world and a plea for the recognition of the instruments of change "across the river".

A looping pulsating introductory organ and drum machine falls into a sweep of reversed guitars. K-stars, from what I can gather, is about young, adventurous intellects, drawn towards the exceptional parts of life, wandering through Paris. However, after further research, the song seems to be about Situationist International, an avant-garde group of artists, poets, writers, or anyone who used their brain in a creative or genuinely thoughtful capacity in Europe through the 60s. They supported avant-garde art movements like Dada and Surrealism, among others. SI took on pieces of libertarian Marxism as a means of critiquing advanced capitalism, defining that individual expression as the consumption of commodities or alienation, as a result of advanced capitalism, were detrimental to individualism and society. K-stars' outro further supports this. It's ending is an ungrounded feedback loop, taking after avant-garde krautrockers and experimental musicians. 

Perversion speaks on the repression of pleasure as Christian society deems it to be sinful. The entire track envokes pleasure. The groove on the drums, the jangly guitars, the organ that jumps in midway through...so much to love. The killer sporadic organ solo that lasts almost a minute takes away from the topic at hand a bit. Stereolab tends to do that a lot. The feel of the track doesn't necessarily fit the vibe of the lyrics all the time, but that's what makes the band so appealing. Perversion, if you aren't paying attention to the lyrics, is an upbeat song that you can move to. The lyrics presents an issue to grapple with. Is pleasure the ultimate human desire? Or is pleasure a sin, and anyone who seeks it out is perverted? 

The track following Perversion is perhaps the best named song I've ever seen. You Little Shits reminds me a bit of The Stone Roses, a b-side to one of their singles. I could hear Ian Brown singing the melody. It might actually be one of my favorite tracks from the record. It has a dream-like quality to it. A near perfect psych rock song. More reverb needed. The last minute feels like it's setting up this big drop back into a cavern of fuzz. But alas, it doesn't.

The Seeming and the Meaning has to be one of the strongest tracks on the entire record. Straight out the gate the song gets you going. It jumps in with all energy possible. I'm just now realizing that the build up in You Little Shits is meant to build up tension before it implodes in The Seeming and the Meaning. The hook is the reversed guitar leads in the breaks. "Ba Ba Ba Ba." Take a look at the lyrics and try to tell me that they aren't a prediction of the echo chamber that is social media. "We communicate more and more, In more defined ways than ever before, But no one has got anything to say." 

The first track on the record to feature lyrics entirely in French is Mellotron. An organ drones the entire length of the track, built upon a vocal and drum loop. It barely changes. A quick break in the lyrics introduces a short guitar line. The buzz of the organ is the main focal point, almost overpowering everything else.

Enivrez-vous, translated into English, means "get drunk". It's a poem by Charles Baudelaire, published posthumously in a French poem compilation book in 1869. Stereolab sets the poem to music beautifully, a true shoegaze masterpiece. It's not sung, but spoken in its native language. Having a French poem in your song makes it edgy and cool, but doing it authentically makes it even cooler.

I can't quite place what Stomach Worm sounds like to me. It could be a 60s pop track, but it has a quality that keeps it from sounding exactly like one. It could be the Kurt Cobain guitar solo in the middle. No, no, that's too obvious. There's something else. I can't tell if they've got the Kevin Shields guitar vacuum sound going on because there's so much happening. Ah, I got it. A 60s pop track would be way cleaner than this. Stereolab really puts the "lab" part of their name to good use on this track. There's a base that keeps the rhythm going and the rest of 6 and a half minutes is smashed by a toddler playing guitar. I just found a 9 minute video of them playing it that kind of blows the album version out of the water. Time to go on a Stereolab live video deep dive...

The final track comes in at a little over 7 minutes long. Surrealchemist starts soft with a gorgeous melody and vocal performance by Laetitia. You think it's nice and calm, until it's not. The blaring organ comes back with a vengeance. Well, not necessarily a vengeance, but it'll definitely scare the shit out of you if you're not expecting it. It continues for the last 4 minutes of the track, only to fade into an ultra thick bass tone doom metal bass players are jealous of. An ending fitting of Stereolab. Sort of unexpected. Sometimes you wish they'd going into a massive crescendo, but you know full well that they'd never do that. In true krautrock fashion, they play the same 2 or 3 chords over and over again with some weird noises in the back until they feel the need to end the track. Splendid.

Stereolab has quickly become one of my favorite bands this year. All of their work is stellar. Peng!, though, holds a part of my heart. It has that shoegaze sound that the rest of their records don't have. I'm not saying I don't love their work post-Peng!, but Peng!'s sound is appealing to me as someone with a background in heavier, less experimental work. Now that I've found my way into more "unorthodox" music, I've been able to really enjoy Stereolab's discography. 

Peng! lays the basis for what the band would become. The beginning of a decades long experiment: Stereolab. I need to go back and listen to the first EPs and singles that they released to get more of a feel for what their early work entails. Peng! is a great place to start though. It's motorik rhythms, dual French and English melodies based around surrealist ideals, and overall tone make it a transcendental piece of work. I honestly lack the words to describe their sound. I think I might just be tired. Or I need to get a thesaurus. Or both.

Well, there you go. Finally another album review. I find it funny that I always write about records that came out over 10 years ago. Hell, Peng! turned 30 in 2022. I guess it's nice to find a fresh perspective on something from so long ago. I was, however, a little hesitant to publish this review. I don't know a lot about Stereolab. Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall? I could talk about them in my sleep, and I probably do. I prefer to write and talk about bands that I'm well versed in. That's why Oasis comes up so often. I know basically everything about them. So talking about a band I don't know a ton about and having an opinion on their music might piss a lot of people off. That's why I do research. So I guess it helps to review albums from bands I haven't delved into fully, because it makes me do the research and learn their story. So I guess it's a-okay.

Listen to the record and tell me what you think. Peng! is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Go find what's across the river. See you next week...

Cheers,

Jack