Hi, everyone. Pullthony Uptano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Stereolab album, Instant Holograms on Metal Film.

Here is the newest and 11th full-length album from this legendary band, highly influential too, one of the best and most unique and creative to ever do it in the underground, which seems a little weird to say because in a way, I do think it low-balls their impact a little bit. Because while Stereolab, true, they have never seen super massive commercial success, the ripples of their impact can be heard all over the music world, with many of their classic albums providing inspiration for some of the most colorful pop and indie production of our time. Certainly, the band has hipped a lot of musicians to many experimental and psychedelic music modes as well. But on top of that, Stereolab has also been sampled by some of the greatest hip hop artists of all time, too.

The band's long and storied career is one that is very difficult to encapsulate into a single review as well, especially for a record such as this one, which in a way is pretty much a comeback album. It's Stereolab's first official studio release since 2010's Not Music. Though for a while now, Stereolab and its members have continued to be some of the most active, inactive musicians of all time. I mean, even Not Music was released after a point in history where it was pretty much made clear that things were going to be slowing down for the band.

And since then, lead members Tim Gane as well as Laetitia Sadier have put out numerous solo and side projects. I mean, Laetitia even had a record drop last year. And let's not also forget the Switched On compilation projects that have been getting dropped under the Stereolab name in recent years as well, which for sure mostly contain a lot of B-sides and rarities and random spare tracks and remasters. But still, even the band's extra stuff is so great you could slap it together on a disk and repackage it, and it still sounds fantastic and vibes, just as it were, like a new quality album from them.

So even without Stereolab being overtly active in the music world, there is really no shortage of Stereolab to dive into, especially considering their most classic works in that 10-year-or-so period from the early 90s to the early 2000s, where they dropped a lot of their best work – that stuff is aging like fine wine. As well as the band's later era stuff before they went on their original hiatus; honestly, even a record like Chemical Chords in the current modern day landscape is pretty refreshing. I mean, sure, the instrumentation on this album may not be as weird or as subversive or as explorative as something like on Dots and Loops. But that album is still packed with gorgeous, exotic, beautiful arrangements, lovely vocals, mysterious psychedelic odysseys, and colorful jams, which in the time period this record was released, sure, it probably on some level sounded less novel given that in this time period, the indie scene was very much catching up with the wave that Stereolab had been on for years – I mean, very much started.

But now, once again, in 2025, Stereolab is sounding as beautiful and alien as ever, especially given that right now a lot of the indie scene is just as obsessed as the mainstream is with whatever is going to scale scale on Spotify or make for a playlistable song.

Now, to put this record in context of the greater Stereolab catalog, I think the songs and jams on this project are not quite as subversive or as experimental as some of the band's older works in the '90s. But comparing this to the last two albums the band put out before their hiatus, the analog synthesizers and quirky arrangements are very much back in a big way. It also helps that it sounds like the band sonically has not missed a beat since that time period, vocally and instrumentally.

In so many ways, that classic Stereolab magic is back, whether you're talking about the off-kilter grooves and vibraphone passages of "Esemplastic Creeping Eruption" or the dissertation on consumption that Laetitia launches into on the album's lead single, "Aerial Troubles", which is a song very much about no longer being able to numb a pain or ignore a greater trouble or problem in the world through consumption or just some other distraction, which, again, is classic Stereolab in so many ways, because the band has always had this knack for making tuneful work of some pretty dense lyrical material, whether it be something political or even philosophical, too.

As the band addresses topics of egoism and love and freedom on "Immortal Hands", or also dives into this idea of embracing your higher self over deceivers who bastardize texts in an organized religion on the song "Vermona F Transistor". But for most people, I think the main draw of this album is going to be it's very playful, very strange, warped, neato combination of space-age pop, funk, neo-psychedelia, krautrock, jazz, and some lounge-y vibes, too. Or just whatever esoteric musical reference the band can get their hands on to just change into an entrancing and amateurishly endearing jam that's a little whimsical, a little stiff, and pretty cool.

Now, there are moments on this record where, per usual for Stereolab, this goes over fantastically, like on "Immortal Hands" and "Vermona F Transistor" that I mentioned earlier. I especially love the groovy transition the latter of those two tracks undergoes with its schmaltzy synthesizers and classy horn section. There's also the thrilling propulsive synth jam the band embarks on on "Electrified Teenybop!", which is the most krautrock they have sounded in years. There's also the trippy low-key French funk of "If You Remember I Forgot How to Dream, Part 1" which there is a groove to, but simultaneously a quaint Stereolab rigidness. That's their trademark at this point. Also a lot of psychedelic touches of effects, tight mechanical beats that you can just really get locked into. Just absolutely perfect for a cerebral headphones listen.

Simultaneously, there are other deep cuts on the record that I thought were just okay or passable, pretty, but still very much left me wanting more, whether it be "Melody is a Wound", which was another big single from the project, but one that was perplexing for me given that the segues throughout the song are messy and not really up to Stereolab's usual standards.

In fact, there are other jam odysseys and transitions these songs undergo that are a lot smoother or don't sound like a random fade out with another song entirely just tacked onto it afterwards. And while the stiff performances on these tracks are, again, per usual, a cute Stereolab trademark, simultaneously, when that is paired with very repetitive pacing on some of these songs, it does make me wish we were in an era of the band's catalog that embraced experimentation a bit more. I mean, obviously, I enjoy the more relaxed and pretty and idyllic characteristics of Stereolab's sound. It's just that these would be more consistently paired with wild, out-there, and even more subversive ideas on their older material. That just seems a little missing on this record, even if a lot of the band's classic elements have returned.

But with that being said, there are still a lot of highly enjoyable tracks on this LP. And while I wouldn't say Stereolab is back with a vengeance, they're most certainly back, and hopefully gearing up more and more releases into the future as well.

While this isn't the greatest comeback album I've heard ever, I feel like this is a really great start, a really great beginning of a potential longer return, one that I hope sees the band stepping into more adventurous pastures, which is what made them so compelling and interesting to begin with, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 7 on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Stereolab, Forever.