The new album from Laetitia Sadier may be the closest the Stereolab singer's gotten yet to the sound of her own band. It's a lovely, expansive record. And it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Rooting for Love, out today via Drag City, sounds like mid-Nineties Stereolab.
"The Inner Smile" and "Who + What" favor a kind of ascending pop. Sadier's supple voice leads the melodies up to the skies, and around them. The cuts are similar to something like "I Feel The Air (Of Another Planet)" from her home band, though things here on Rooting for Love are more tethered to a concise, rhythmic mode of presentation. The tracks are all precise here, though there are flashes of the transcendent, thanks to Sadier's delightful vocals. "New Moon" finds Laetitia nearly sparring with The Choir, the backing vocal on lots of this, and the call-and-response is spine-tingling. The cut churns a bit, and eases forward with a momentum that's thoroughly compelling.
Less interested in recasting the kind of retro-futuristic pop of Stereolab, Laetitia Sadier uses most of Rooting for Love to stretch as a vocalist, and allow a propulsive sense of the sublime to carry every cut skyward. There's little here that is not delightful, and nearly all of this produces the same rush of pleasure that we feel when we play our favorites Stereolab sides.
Rooting for Love by Laetitia Sadier is out now via Drag City.
[Photo: Marie Merlet]