SALON

Tuesday, May 9, 2000 4:00 PM UTC

Sharps & Flats

Belle and Sebastian spinoff Looper's billowy songs float on groovy rhythms, electronic beats and laid-back vibes.

By

Topics: Music,

Sharps & Flats

Midway through “The Geometrid,” the second album by the Scottish group target="new"
href="http://www.jeepster.co.uk/looper/header.shtml">Looper, there’s
a song, “These Things,” that is as lovely as it is confounding. The fuzzed-out,
sleepyheaded chorus, “These things almost make me smile,” is given narcotic
expression by singer Stuart David amid a drizzle of electronic baubles and a
hypnotic drum-’n'-bass beat.

A meditative quality exists in the repetition, but there’s no clear defining of
why “these things” would make David almost smile or, more intriguingly,
what it is about them that stops him short of actually smiling. What is it, after
all, that makes a smile thought-about, yet not realized? The line seems to
exist more as a koan than anything else. And in many ways “The Geometrid,” as a whole, is a similar vehicle.

The former bass player for href="/ent/music/feature/1999/05/04/bowlie/index.html">Belle and
Sebastian, David began Looper a few years back as a side project with
his wife, Karn. His brother Ronnie Black and friend Scott Twynholm are also in
the group, which is less a typical band than an artistic/musical collective.

Driven by electronic samples, sound effects, visual imagery and Casio
noodling, the new album has a murky theme hidden throughout its 10
songs — something along the lines of the steadily escalating prominence of
technology in everyday life. In that vein are such songs as “My Robot,”
“Tomorrow’s World” — which explores the realization, or more accurately, the
failed realization of latter-20th-century visions of the future — and “Modem
Song,” a tune that draws its musical core from modem squawks.

But in inventing an overarching statement about modern technology, Looper
has created a work that is surprisingly old-fashioned and quaint. The group
has given electronic music what it so often lacks: soul, and a blessedly
beating heart even. Though filled with pops and hisses and high-pitched
squeals culled from an increasingly gadgetized world, the record remains
enchantingly melodic and tuneful. Billowy songs float on low-key groovy
rhythms, creating a sort of earthy/hippie music for the electronic age. As
David sings in “On the Flipside,” he’d just like to “drink some lemonade and
sit and just be quiet.”

Many of the songs’ lyrics aren’t lyrics at all, but fairy-tale stories read over
beats and effects. They are songs a 5-year-old might hear in his head as he
stares at the sky trying to decide whether a cloud is a giant fish or a
snowman. With their curious lyrics and meandering melodies, Looper’s songs
are open to quizzical interpreting. They become clouds full of mystery and
magic and possibility. They become the sort of things that almost make you
smile.

Joe Heim is a frequent contributor to Salon. He lives in Washington. More Joe Heim.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations