chad wrote:neu! anyone? crap.
sure, neu is an influence, but they hardly sound "just like neu!".
in fact, toss in some equal parts of astrud gilberto, suicide (yes, SUICIDE), beach boys, perrey and kingsley, kraftwerk, mbv and wire and you're getting closer.
not crap with a waffle factor for some of their output in the late 90's.
i love the songs "crest" and "noise of carpet"
early sophomore stuff (transient random blah blah blah, emperor tomato, mars audiac quintet) and the most recent stuff is the best in my opinion. in the middle they were waffling on the yuppie adult contemporary/lounge music fence for a while, with music that was better suited for a VW commercial or ian schrager hotel than my headphones..
the earliest stuff, has some great tunes, but it is recorded quite poorly.
plus, they sing about old analog synthesizers and marxism. I can't think of any typical love songs. this alone gets them points.
there are thousands of bands that are doing much worse. and stereolab has kept it up for a while without genre hopping too often.