Jenny Ondioline Review Melody Maker Aug 21 1993

‘Jenny Ondioline’ was reviewed by Taylor Parkes in the Singles section of the Melody Maker August 21 1993 issue.

I’ve transcribed the review –

STEREOLAB JENNY ONDIOLINE (Duophonic) NOW this is something. I know who Stereolab are, and I like them. And this is superb, jungle cats on stilts, peeping into the open belly of a gored matador. A record that has been bloodied on the forecourt of a petrol station and then dreamt about it six nights running. Ferocious, and not collapsible.

An organ spread its arms into the crucifix position, and insistent, pebbly guitars pile up behind it. Harmonies happen as wafers of compressed noise. There is height, but no depth. Claustrophobia and vertigo, so help me God. It’s music that sounds like it was created under laboratory conditions, clean, dry and crushingly intense. Rattling around inside is something faintly exotic, or Germanic. Panicky and pristine. Throbbing. As a colour, it would be an impenetrable indigo, as a circus act it certainly wouldn’t be the clowns. It actually sounds like The United States Of America, but that’s just me showing off.

Stereolab are all over their music, and yet utterly detached from it. You’re nothing until your flashback sequence.