Give me the strength the lift, hope, and struggle

November 18, 2013 6:09 PM

On “Jenny Ondioline,” Stereolab pointed the way to a retro future 20 years ago Jenny Ondioline was released.

Av Club's Sean O'Neal reflects upon the importance of the grounbreaking 18-minute spacerock epic.

posted by Annika Cicada (55 comments total)

Once a friend and I mutually lost respect for each others' taste in music over this song. Our responses to it and each other went as follows:
Him: I mean, the album is called 'transient random-noise bursts with announcements,' that pretty much says it all.
Me: I KNOW! Isn't it great!?!
Him: No.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:14 PM on November 18, 2013 [8 favorites]

Him: I mean, the album is called 'transient random-noise bursts with announcements,' that pretty much says it all.
Me: I KNOW! Isn't it great!?!
Him: No.

Conversely, my best friend and I were mutually dismayed that the album didn't, in fact, contain transient random noise-bursts with announcements.
posted by mykescipark at 6:17 PM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]

"Pause" does! Sort of. It samples a numbers station, and I suspect the album title is a reference to that.
posted by griphus at 6:23 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't discover Stereolab until about 4 years after this album was released. TRNBWA, and Jenny Ondioline in particular, continues to be among my favorites. This song isn't easy for a lot of people to get into, but neither is the Krautrock that inspired it.
posted by TrialByMedia at 6:24 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

There is an announcement about 13:40 seconds in to Jenny Ondioline: "the quality signal is recorded equally on both channels....but is out of phase"

I listen to this song in its entirety at least once a month. It has so much in rocker/groove/noise/Neu homage etc.
posted by borges at 6:35 PM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]

I love Stereolab, but my favorite song with Laetitia Sadier is by Atlas Sound, called Quick Canal.
posted by gucci mane at 6:37 PM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

I can dance all night to Transporte sans bouger, along with Jenny Ondioline, Golden Ball, Transona Five (so much that I was in a band by that name) Three Dee Melodie, French Disko, Moogie Wonderland, We're Not Adult Oriented and a few dozen others for sure.

Jenny Ondioline is one of the few "you suck if you don't like it" filters I have.
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:39 PM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

20 years ago?

Nope. Not possible. Sorry. It is merely four years ago, and I am sure of it.
posted by aramaic at 6:54 PM on November 18, 2013 [10 favorites]

I do not, as a rule, like to go out to see bands play, because I'm always reminded that I'd rather be on stage than watching the stage, but I have seen every Stereolab live show I could, because magical wonderment and hard-rockin' joy always ensued.

I miss them. I miss Mary.

The solo work is fine, but I miss my occasional magical wonderment, even if it meant finding parking in that hyperactive U Street neighborhood.

Sigh.
posted by sonascope at 6:58 PM on November 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

I had no idea Jenny Ondioline was such a touchstone. It's nice to know other people love it too - I've never really thought of it as a really cohesive whole, it always seemed to me to be several songs stuck together, like an EP in the middle of an album, tracks merely undistinguished due to some kind of inevitable French ennui.

I still listen to Switched On all the time.
posted by the painkiller at 7:01 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

As appreciations go, that was pretty thin, but Stereolab remains one of my all time favorites. I think they're the band I've seen most often--maybe 8 times at this point. I saw them for the first time at my College's dining center and it was amazing. There were maybe--matbe--50 of us, probably fewer. The band put on an amazing show. This was supporting mars audiac quintet.

I haven't seen them in about ten years, but I'd make a point of it.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:01 PM on November 18, 2013

Oh, and one of the shittier things in my concert-going life was that I was taking a new medication when I saw them live on the Margerine Ecipse tour, and it messed with my head and I don't remember the show.
posted by griphus at 7:03 PM on November 18, 2013

It has so much in rocker/groove/noise/Neu homage etc.

umm, to be clear, the lead blurb should read .... On “Hallogallo” Neu pointed the way. 41 years ago, Hallogallo was released.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with Jenny Ondioline. It sounded just fine in '93.
posted by philip-random at 7:05 PM on November 18, 2013

Yeah, the dark secret is how totally derivative Stereolab really is, but they did it with taste okay ;-)
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:11 PM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

Stereolab is one of the bands that inspired me and my wife to make music in the first place. Love their entire body of work. And the High Llamas. Can't believe it's been so long.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:13 PM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

The Painkiller: It was released as an EP first
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:13 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

About the time this came out a more musically knowledgable friend of mine pointed out Stereolab were (ahem) borrowing heavily from Neu. So Stereolab pointed the way back for me at least. Lucky for me, I like both bands.
posted by borges at 7:13 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

(Always wondered if Os Mutantes were an influence on them, too...)
posted by saulgoodman at 7:15 PM on November 18, 2013

Yeah, I would've never heard about Can and Neu! if it wasn't for Stereolab.
posted by griphus at 7:16 PM on November 18, 2013

Yeah, the dark secret is how totally derivative Stereolab really is, but they did it with taste okay ;-)

Start here
Continue
Keep going
Keep going...
Yes, there's more

Oh never mind, there are about 17 (yes, 17 of these) here.
posted by borges at 7:18 PM on November 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

This song was the perfect salve for my soul at a time when I was naively trying to glue my psyche back together with speed and alcohol after an intense love affair with psychedelics took a nasty turn. It seemed to bridge the ecstasy of my peak psychedelic experiences with the cold, sharp-edges of the new world I now inhabited. I was also deeply into philosophy and had just discovered critical theory (and thought I even understood it), so the marxist/theoretical aspects of Stereolab's lyrics scratched that itch as well. The song gave me hope, somehow. As messed up as I was, maybe I could somehow make it work, just like the song made it work, and there could still be joy and bliss after disillusionment.
posted by treepour at 7:19 PM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

I kind of lost touch with Stereolab after Sound Dust, but at one point I loved them so much I told a friend (while in a Toronto-style drunken stupor) that they were my girlfriend. Still love them, although I'm definitely on Team Pre-Dots & Loops. My personal Top 10:

1. Refried Ectoplasm
2. Peng!
3. Emperor Tomato Ketchup
4. Mars Audiac Quintet
5. TRNBWA
6. Aluminum Tunes
7. Switched On
8. Sound Dust
9. Dots & Loops
10. Cobra and Phases Group...
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:20 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Can! Love them too. Former bandmate of ours had The Box of Can (a Can boxed-set). We watched it on a loop.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:20 PM on November 18, 2013

Oh never mind, there are about 17 (yes, 17 of these) here.

Oh damn those deserve an FPP on their own.

There are Broadcast ones, too! I am sad Broadcast never reached the same level of critical acclaim that Stereolab did, but the reasons -- time, place, exposure -- are pretty clear.
posted by griphus at 7:20 PM on November 18, 2013 [5 favorites]

Broadcast were pretty great, too. Another Stereolab-esque band that put out an album I liked was Saloon.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:24 PM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

You're going to make me cry bringing all these amazing bands back up. Especially Broadcast.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:24 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Can I just say that my favourite Stereolab track is Simple Headphone Mind, which they did with Nurse With Wound. I don't know quite why it hits the spot so well, but.... (trigger: spiiiiiiders... red crayon spiiiiiiiiiiderrrrs)
posted by Devonian at 7:24 PM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]

I have to admit I actually like Broadcast better than Stereolab, but that's entirely a combination of personal preference and that when I was getting into contemporarily-released music in the early 2000s, Stereolab already had a sort of intimidating discography whereas Broadcast were coming up alongside me.
posted by griphus at 7:29 PM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh damn those deserve an FPP on their own.

Have those never been posted here before? Maybe I need to get on that...
posted by borges at 7:30 PM on November 18, 2013

Honestly, the Stereolab-is-derivative pitch reels always sound a little desperate to me. Really? "The Free Design" and "Dancing Queen?" Why? Because they're both played in equal temperament?

Being influenced by krautrock means...you'll probably sound a little bit like krautrock.

Same sort of silly thing goes on with The High Llamas—what? They sound like the Beach Boys? Well, now they're just ruined!
posted by sonascope at 7:33 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Stereolab Origins have been posted here before, see: "History will only repeat itself once more." But good lord, the individual(s) behind ArchivesListening has added 13 additional 'Origins' since it was posted here in 2007, plus the Broadcast ones.
posted by borges at 7:35 PM on November 18, 2013

Yeah, the dark secret is how totally derivative Stereolab really is, but they did it with taste okay ;-)

Yeah! The derivative part is what we love about them ;-)
Borrow, Steal & Influenced-by: kraut-rock, retro-lounge, classic-drone-rock (Velvets & Joy Division), electronic-bleeps&bloops, yé-yé-pop, quasi-marxist-lyrics, and with a beat that you can dance to: stuck in a blender with effects-pedals = a formula for the critic's lil' darlings. With a combination like this, you can count me in as a sucker for this swell cultural product.
posted by ovvl at 7:36 PM on November 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

the Stereolab-is-derivative pitch reels always sound a little desperate to me.

It never bothered me in the slightest. I like their borrowing because, hey, good borrowing! The Stereolab Origins are a treasure trove of great music.
posted by borges at 7:37 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think you're the target audience for Stereolab, though, whereas too many of the people who jump up with the claim that they "stole" from NEU! et cetera are working hard on their cooler-than-thou cred.

It's funny, I came to them backwards, because I was a Czukay/Can fan and a krautrock nutterik and loved loopy stuff like Piero Umliani and Esquivel first, so when my drummer played Stereolab for me, it all seemed nicely familiar and new at once.

Later, of course, they didn't sound like anybody but Stereolab.
posted by sonascope at 7:43 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Being influenced by krautrock means...you'll probably sound a little bit like krautrock.

yeah, but Jenny Ondioline (the drone parts anyway which comprise most of it) doesn't just sound like Neu's Hallogallo, it's effectively a cover, even to the extent that it just goes on and on ... and beautifully so in both cases.

And I may have not have heard Hallogallo until it was at least ten years old, but that was still a good decade before Transient Random Noise Bursts caught my ear. Which was in a record store. "Cool," I said to the guy behind the counter, "I thought the world had forgotten Neu."

"Who's Neu?" he said.

So yes, Stereolab did a wonderful job of bringing Neu back from sonic oblivion ... but why didn't they also give them a share of the songwriting credit? It's a point I brought up with them once during a radio interview (though it actually happened off-air -- it wasn't my interview). As I recall, they just sort of glazed over, chose not to engage, which struck me as strange. Still does.
posted by philip-random at 8:03 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

In the Stereolab Origins 1 there was the comparison between Transona 5 and On the Road Again. Sloan released a fun "live" version of T5 which segues into a bathroom break and conversation and then back to the show where you notice it's become OTRA.

It's a lot of fun if you can find it.

I still listen to Stereolab now and then, and recently added the BBC sessions compilation to my iPhone for the walk to work. Seeing them at a tiny club (Purple Haze in Montreal) on the Mars Audiac Quintet tour was a show that changed my musical life.

What an awesome band they were.
posted by sauril at 8:18 PM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

My first introduction to Stereolab was Mars Audiac Quintet. I bought it the night before I flew to Osaka. It's my sound track to riding the trains that first hot, crazy week.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:26 PM on November 18, 2013

Strange that they wouldn't acknowledge the debt to Neu! Since Tim Gane has acknowledged them as a major influence plenty of times.
posted by borges at 8:37 PM on November 18, 2013

Philip-Random: Stereolab would rather be in the driver's seat of the "teaching you what's up" and for whatever reason I never figured out were not too keen on having their derivative nature pointed out to them. They were more into living through music and life than geeking out on it while on the road, I guess? I don't know, they were rather impenetrable though. I guess at the time it added to their mystique in way. By the time Dots and Loops was released (my absolutely favorite album of theirs, by far and away) I had plateau'd on what they were about and drifted away. Emperor Tomato Ketchup? It's amazing pablum, great for a ride but it's kind of a bizarre simulacra of Stereolab. Everything up to Refried Ectoplasm and Mars Audiac, aw, hell, that's pure golden magic.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:40 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

In the '90s in North Texas the local alt-rock station had a show called The Adventure Club that would play whatever artsy stuff wouldn't make it on normal radio. I seem to remember quite a bit of The Stone Roses and Morrissey showing up on that show, which left me kind of indifferent, but I was still desperately looking for something that wasn't Nirvana or Pearl Jam or the Toadies and so I listened to see if there was some kind of music that worked for me. I heard them play a Stereolab song and I remember being intrigued. This was in 1996 and I was 16. I picked up a copy of Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements (that name! It sounded so cool to me because it didn't care if it was cool; it was purposefully geeky but with a frisson of the avant-garde, or at least that's how it sounded to me then). TR-NBWA came to me as a revelation, at least in that I didn't know that anyone was making music that sounded so frothy and organic and also so positive! It was about revolution without all the corrosive angst that seemed to be everywhere at the time (cf. Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, etc.). Stereolab helped me forge an identity in the way that you are desperate for when you're 16.
posted by no mind at 8:56 PM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

We're Not Adult Orientated is in my essential driving playlist; strong memories of coffee and pre-dawn runs down the I-5.

As my CD of The Groop Played... also has a "Neu Wave Live" version of We're Not Adult Orientated I don't think they're backing too far away from their roots. Perhaps they have grown a little tired of the same line of questions over the years?
posted by N-stoff at 9:14 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

N-Stoff: That's my serious jam.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:54 PM on November 18, 2013

<3. C'est tout.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:57 PM on November 18, 2013

1. I'm ashamed to admit that I was so brainwashed by the "Broadcast are Stereolab Lite" propaganda that I never gave them a serious listen until this year. Now I love both bands, but I don't find them all that similar if one is actually paying attention. Sad that it took me so long.

2. Cobra and Phases has always been my favorite Stereolab album. I just love the textures and the constant dial-switching of the synth sounds. It's crazy and meandering and very long but I think it's divine. Especially "Blue Milk."
posted by mykescipark at 10:23 PM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Sonascope, I'm pretty sure the swingy horn riff at about 2:50 is a direct deliberate quote of Dancing Queen, but other than that they have very little in common. They reconstruct all sorts of little snippets of older songs, but they do it with such class and intelligence that I can't in any way fault them for it.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:07 PM on November 18, 2013

For me, Transient Random is the only Stereolab LP that really hits the spot. My vinyl copy, picked up for cheap in Jumbo records, Leeds, is pressed ever so slightly off centre, which adds a peculiar puke-drunk sway to the whole affair. Kind of unlistenable TBH.

I had another minor disaster with my Jenny Ondioline EP (10" vinyl FTW!) which somehow got dented in a way that created a highly appropriate but incredibly annoying lock groove in the middle of my all time favourite Stereolab song of all time: French Disko.

When I read the AV Club article last week I dug out the EP and gave it another spin. Miracle of miracles, it played correctly, all the way through. No lock groove! I consider this to be the universe's 40th birthday present to me. MERCI L'UNIVERS!
posted by ZipRibbons at 12:36 AM on November 19, 2013 [2 favorites]

I had this ep knocking about somewhere, I can still remember where I was when I first heard French disko - which has a wonderful outro here.
posted by sgt.serenity at 12:41 AM on November 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

That Stereolab could encompass all of these elements—retro-futurism, political sloganeering, making really pretty pop music—in one package only made the band more difficult to categorize, even in a year when the categories were constantly expanding. Most critics settled on “post-rock,” a catchall that came to be as meaninglessly applied as “indie rock” in just a few short years.


Stereolab more than made up for this by putting a steady stream of capsule summaries and/or potential genre names (“Op-Hop”, “John Cage Bubble Gum”, “Barock-Plastik”) in their song titles.
posted by acb at 5:43 AM on November 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

Someday I am finally going to accept it that Stereolab broke up.

Not today though.
posted by applemeat at 7:38 AM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]

I hate how the derivative thing always comes up when you talk about Stereolab. I actually see them as being on the cutting-edge in terms of musician as curator (obviously hip-hop did that explicitly with sampling, but I think we're only fully exploring this in the late 00's and 10's with the new deep-dive into bands attempting to be pure aesthetes in appropriating the past.)

Dots and Loops is my favorite album of theirs and I think it's sui generis. I haven't heard anything since it was released that sounds remotely like it. It's a mammoth achievement.
posted by naju at 7:46 AM on November 19, 2013 [8 favorites]

The dark secret about music is that every band is influenced by the bands that came before.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 7:49 AM on November 19, 2013 [5 favorites]

'Peng!' was such a revelation for me and my friends, and everything thereafter has been welcome variation on the theme. We lived in Rural Flyover America, and this was just before (or just as) the internet was percolating in, so a random static-flushed breakthrough of a college radio station from Little Rock one night during a driving session had us so rapt we pulled over into a field by Frenchman Mountain and listened to the entire thing. I named our first collective bong--a cheap red and orange two-tone plastic affair bought from Bungalow Bill's over by Camp Robinson--after 'Mellotron.' God bless you, college radio in the early 1990s.

La sensualité
Noyée dans la tendresse
Est illimitée
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:00 AM on November 19, 2013

Naju: I'm with you, I think Dots and Loops is by far and away their most impressive work.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:14 AM on November 19, 2013

God I love Stereolab. Wish I could claim to have been into them in the '90s, but I was listening to other, less cool things at the time.

I have this one '90s memory, though, of my cool cousin Dave and his teenage hipster friends sitting round one hot Auckland Christmas listening to something odd, which I realize now was Stereolab. I guess that explains why Dave subsequently proceeded to the outlands of bedroom-produced disco trance and I, er, didn't.
posted by Sonny Jim at 9:31 AM on November 19, 2013

Annika Cicada: "Yeah, the dark secret is how totally derivative Stereolab really is, but they did it with taste okay ;-)"

Absolutely nothing is wrong with being derivative. Picasso was. Springsteen is putting out traditional folk songs. And I'm pretty sure this gal or guy was copying ideas from someone else' Aurochs.

It's a bad thing to be derivative, without adding anything. Not ironic context, not a fresh look, not a personal symbology... just photographing the couples' hands black-and-white with her engagement ring in full-color, because - Zowie! - that trick works! (Even that's OK, if you're out to make a buck. Just don't pretend you're advancing the art with it.)
posted by IAmBroom at 1:19 PM on November 19, 2013