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For as long as records are made — or at least listened to in some fashion, Laetitia Sadier will forever be linked with Stereolab, the band she has fronted with ex-partner Tim Gane throughout the heady pre-and-post-millennial years of the past two decades. But 2009 signaled changes — Stereolab announced an indefinite hiatus and Laetitia disbanded her original solo project/band, Monade. Fittingly, Laetitia is releasing her first ‘official’ solo record, The Trip. The theme of the record addresses such passages: “Putting my name on this record reflects my need not to rely on or hide behind anyone. On a deeper level, I also had a very strong urge to make sense of the loss of my sister Noelle, so it’s a very personal homage to life’s journey and a grieving process for the separations that are an unavoidable part of life.”


Laetitia has been performing her new songs at solo live shows this summer with just voice and electric guitar, but for The Trip she packed a band sound, with musical collaborators including Americans Rebecca Gates, Richard Swift and April March and French musicians Julien Gasc and Emmanuel Mario (who also collaborated on the final Monade album Monstre Cosmic).

“One Million Year Trip,” the opening track, deals directly with her sister’s suicide and Sadier’s attempt to grieve and understand her loss. The tone of this song, while deeply personal, conveys a certain effervescence obtained perhaps only from the kind of reflection incurred by such a tragedy. This is the tone for the album, conveying a lightness that belies the bitterness of the subject matter.


The band sound was conceived with a spare touch in mind. It was Laetitia’s intention not to overload or layer’ the music on the new record too much. “It was made with this principle in mind, maybe as a reaction to an ever-increasingly busy world and a natural need for stillness. There are layers, particularly to the vocals, but I feel I’ve pulled off the intent of simplicity.” Indeed, songs such as “Statues Can Bend,” are arranged for a minimum of pieces, letting the song and the vocal communicate a disarming depth of soul. Throughout the album, a straightforward, carefully arranged approach expresses Laetitia’s reflections in a personal, yet public form of entertainment. Completing the contemplation of Laetitia’s own songs are three covers, including Wendy & Bonnie’s “By The Sea” and Les Rita Mitsouko’s dance-funk-punk classic “Un Soir Un Chien,” featured in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1987 film, Soigne Ta Droite.

As a solo artist, she explains she can approach song-writing in a different way: “In Stereolab, the lyrics came second and were always to fit Tim’s music and not the other way around. I don’t have that creative tension with Tim anymore, and I’m finding that very liberating,” she
concludes.