Review - A Few Steps More

Socialisme ou Barbarie, the debut album from Stereolab vocalist Laetitia Sadier's side project, Monade, was a pleasant batch of quasi-'Lab confections. Easily attributable to some need Sadier must have felt to get back to the more organic, guitar-and-synth roots of Stereolab, you would have thought one album would have scratched whatever itch she had. Apparently not, for A Few Steps More finds her again digging into her private stash of songs. As indistinguishable from Socialisme as that disc was from Stereolab's early work, A Few Steps More retains the low-key warmth and and sly humor that used to make Stereolab such an interesting group, if rendered in a slightly more simplistic manner. Several of the songs are unduly complex ("Sensible et Extensible" sounds much like the result of cramming a half-dozen unformed song ideas into one track) and others are disappointingly thin, but it's still an appropriately lightweight and enjoyable disc.