Released: 23/02/24
Stereolab frontwoman Laetitia Sadier has never been your common or garden indie star. Leaving aside for a moment her unapologetic metropolitan Frenchness (catnip to Francophiles like me), made all the more ‘exotic’ by the provincial-England obsession of peers such as Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker (notwithstanding, obviously, Blur’s outlier, the Françoise Hardy-indebted ‘To the End’, on which Sadier guests); and the sonic retro-futurity of Stereloab’s krautrock-inspired ‘space-age bachelor pad music’, Sadier has always been political with un grand P – and a Marxist to boot. Just check out ‘Ping Pong’ from 1994’s Mars Audio Quintet, a searing anti-Capitalist riposte about ‘Kondratiev waves’, a term used to describe the phenomenon of long economic revolutions: ‘It's alright 'cause the historical pattern has shown / How the economical cycle tends to revolve / In a round of decades three stages stand out in a loop / A slump and war then peel back to square one and back for more’ …
As with all her work, Sadier’s fierce intelligence and socio-political convictions are dyed into the fabric of fifth solo album Rooting for Love; but importantly, as evidenced by the aforementioned ‘Ping Pong’, she never lets her poetic proselytising get in the way of a great tune. So while lyrical content deals head-on with the turmoil and heat (both literal and figurative) of the contemporary world, engendered by late stage capitalism, Rooting for Love also offers much hope and positivity, is catchy as all hell, and undoubtedly the most eminently danceable record overtly concerned with dialectical materialism since Marxist Love Disco Ensemble’s MLDE, from 2022. Which, um, may sound like faint praise, given the niche category, but MLDE is an all-timer. Perhaps best described as krautrock, chanson and baroque pop as interpreted by Chic, Rooting for Love is at turns joyful and comforting, and undoubtedly Sadier’s best solo record yet.