Laetitia Sadier: The Trip

On her own, Laetitia Sadier tends to move away from the monolithic rhythmic chug and banks of fizzy analog synthesizers that define her band, Stereolab. Her work with Monade, or on her new solo bow, The Trip, isn’t unrecognizable: Sadier’s foggy croon and penchant for graceful harmony remain intact, as do the kind of big, plucked basslines that drive the tracks. But musically, The Trip tends toward the whimsical, hardly a surprise, since Sadier is collaborating with indie-poppers Richard Swift and April March. The instrumentation is largely acoustic, laid-back, and mature in a way similar to (but without sounding much like) the most recent Tracey Thorn album. “Un Soir, Un Chien,” a disco-rock track in Les Rita Mitsouko’s ’80s original, is here made over into something frothier and smoother. “Natural Child” (a fable about someone “with strong legs and shoulders [who] was made to carry a load way too heavy / Still, you were able to raise, resonate with some loftier weight”) has a salt-water breeziness, thanks to its measured nylon-string guitar and piano.