Stereolab [ tickets ] continues to test the depth of its fans' pockets with "Fab Four Suture," a collection of previously released material and songs that are, as of last week, available elsewhere.

"Fab Four Suture" features tunes that were originally found on the band's three simultaneously released singles from 2005--"Plastic Mile/I Was a Sunny Rainphase," "Kyberneticka Babicka" and "Interlock/Visionary Road Maps." The other half of the disc is filled with new songs from three more singles, all of which, like this full-length album, hit stores on March 7.

So, die-hard Stereolab fans are faced with the prospect of buying this new CD (even though they already own half the material via 2005's trio of single releases), plunking down cash for three more singles or--for the completists in the crowd--doing both. Pretty crafty business model.

Fortunately, the material makes muddling through all this consumer confusion worth the effort. "Fab Four Suture" is a pretty solid release, ranking somewhere between 1996's delightful "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" and 1999's uneven "Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night" on the Stereolab highlight reel.

The music, even though it's been cut and parceled out in various packages, holds together like one solid artistic statement. Once the listener gets past the boring opener "Kyberneticka Babicka Part 1," which is Stereolab at its most monotonous, the album is eclectically entertaining all the way up to the tiresome closer "Kyberneticka Babicka Part 2."

As per usual, French-born vocalist Laetitia Sadier serves as an unflappable host at this hip cocktail party of lounge-pop sounds and spacey mood music. She sounds distant and unaffected, like she's delivering a voiceover to a documentary film about canning vegetables, as the rest of the band blips and beeps through the likes of "Eye of the Volcano" and "Interlock."

"Fab Four Suture" follows 2004's "Margerine Eclipse," which was the band's first full-length release without Mary Hansen, who died in 2002 when the bike she was riding was struck by a car. While the album would have benefited from Hansen's harmony vocals, the material is still very strong. In fact, it's so strong that Stereolab obviously felt obliged to release it on seven different discs.