Apparently there is a new Stereolab album out on February, 2nd. It is titled Margerine Eclipse. I suppose Margerine stands for Mary Hansen, one of the band members who was killed about a year ago in a car/bicycle accident. Strangely enough Stereolab's label Duophonic does not have anything on the new release on their website whereas the album has leaked to the p2p networks a while ago. That's the modern times. The consumer is more up-to-date than the distributor.

I found an mp3 of the song Margerine Rock at Kingblind. Somehow Stereolab had lost me quite early in their career around 1995 or even before when they started integrating film scores, Brazilian music and other stuff in their music. Their sound carpet which used to be low-fi and simple became too thick and colourful for my ears.

Now this new song is very much in the vein of their early records around Peng! when Mary Hansen wasn't yet in the band. It's joyful repetitive minimal pop with its roots going back to Neu!, Velvet Underground, Beach Boys etc. And Lætitia Sadier's voice is sexy as ever. I think this will be the first Stereolab album in ten years that I will get for myself.

P.S. Paul at The Rub also wrote on this album recently and there is a detailed track-by-track anaylsis here at Amazon UK (It's a disgrace. Amazon still doesn't respect customers enough to offer their reviews a permalink.)