*** Stereolab

COBRA AND PHASES GROUP PLAY VOLTAGE IN THE MILKY NIGHT

(Elektra)

Stereolab's 1993 single "Jenny Ondioline (Part 1)" -- four minutes of glimmering krautrock locomotion holding hands with "I Get Around" -- is both the loveliest song about fascism ever written and the early Lab's conceptual peak. The band cruised on that triumphant framework for a few more years, grooving as deeply on pure repetition as James Brown or the Ramones. Then they beelined for the lounge, and though their "jazzy" period yielded the pop fromage of 1996's Emperor Tomato Ketchup, everything since has been aquarium-unit music to watch pulsars by: pretty but low-impact.

The "songs" on Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night are really just elegant paraphrases floating in meringue: "Infinity Girl" evokes Astrud Gilberto's funk foray Gilberto with Turrentine, Steve McGarrett casing a suspect's crib, and Sammy Johns's 1973 AM-radio hit "Chevy Van." After a while, the change-ups start to suggest indecision, not innovation. But the Moog-mad mix still makes every instrument sound as bubblicious as the Nuggets logo, and affectless singers Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen still croon their bilingual lullabies for the working class as rapturously as Teletubbies hooked on phonics. Cereal-box prize: "Hip Op Detonation," which alludes to hip-hop (in a French accent), mid-'60s op art, electronic-pop pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey, and DJ Premier's use of Perrey's "E.V.A." on Gang Starr's "Just To Get a Rep," casually leaping broad traditions in a single drum break.

-- Alex Pappademas