Looper: Offgrid:Offline (Mute)
In the year Belle And Sebastian return from a half-decade hiatus, their former bassist and founding member Stuart David resurfaces with his post-Belle band, Looper. Their last album proper was 2002's The Snare, issued to so-so reviews, though David has also published three novels, the most recent in 2011. He and wife/bandmate Karn have also continued their exploration of the visual art world to noteworthy effect (David's sister is the Turner Prize-nominated sculptor Karla Black). Alongside this new album is a five-CD retrospective with tracks assembled not chronologically but under titles such as Lexiphonics, Kinokraft, Voxtrot etc. Offgrid:Offline displays some of that same wide-ranging approach, mixing David's uncomplicated and quietly melancholy songs with his trademark spoken-word stories. The best of these is the title track, in which he and two friends visit a former musician who has withdrawn to the country to commune instead with silence. There's still a little of that cloying sweetness which made Belle And Sebastian hate figures for some music fans - in Images Of The Shipwreck we find him collecting wild flowers by a river - but on tracks like Farfisa Song and The Lucky Bird, his pop nous shines brightly.
Barry Didcock
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