Ask any Stereolab fan when the glory days ended, and you’ll get a different answer every time. Some hold up 1997’s Dots and Loops as the pinnacle expression of Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier’s kraut-driven pop explosions, while others point even earlier to 1994’s Mars Audiac Quintet as a decent point to stop building one’s collection. Cue up anything the group released between then and 2006’s Fab Four Sutre, and not much has changed. Unsurprisingly (and a dash disappointingly), Sadier’s bedroom pop project Monade has jumped onto a similar path, and with Monstre Cosmic, rather than defining her own distinct personality away from her day job, the results hit like Stereolab-lite.

The opening refrain of “Lost Language” is great (in a circa-2001 Sound-Dust epic sort of way), while “Entre chein et loup” (oh look, isn’t that a riff from 1999’s Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night?) takes its stride slowly, advancing into a running finale that’s up there with Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

That’s not to say Monstre Cosmic is altogether disposable, but it does leave you with at least a couple of niggling questions. First off, if Monstre Cosmic sounds this much like a Stereolab record, why bother with the name (and personnel) change? And secondly, if Tim Gane’s nowhere to be found but everything’s dripping with his “sound,” what exactly does he do in Stereolab, anyway?