Stereolab, Photograph by Joe Dilworth
Stereolab are attuned to the needs of their audience. The band’s new single “Melodie Is A Wound” is accompanied by a cryptic crossword created by The Guardian’s crossword editor Alan Connor.
Stereolab will release their 11th studio album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, on Friday 23 May. The French-British band resumed touring in 2019 following a nine-year hiatus. Instant Holograms On Metal Film is their first album since 2010’s Not Music.
They announced the album in April alongside its anti-consumerist lead single “Aerial Troubles.” On the seven-minute “Melodie Is A Wound,” vocalist Lætitia Sadier shrugs off the idea that weighty language has no place in pop music.
“Truthfulness has fallen in desuetude,” she sings at the end of the song. You can Google “desuetude” on your way to searching for a beginner’s guide to cryptic crosswords.
For what it’s worth, “Melodie Is A Wound” isn’t all that cryptic – it’s summed up by this line in the first verse: “[The] public’s right to know the truth / Gagged, muzzled by the powerful.”
We’re all fucked, I guess. But thank god for Stereloab. And thank god for crosswords.
"Melodie is a Wound" cryptic crossword (click to expand)
