June 26, 2000

Glasgow King Tut's Wah Wah Hut

As promising concepts go, it's up there with the sole-less shoe.

As promising concepts go, it's up there with the sole-less shoe. Take one former Belle & Sebastian lackey (shambling, bespectacled Stuart David), add his wife, Karn (for that cosy home-brewed 'vibe'), equip them with all manner of techno-whizzery and archaic sample-delica, then stand back and watch those insufferably twee sparks fly.

By rights, of course, it should be a disaster. Particularly as the wilful dilettantism and cutesy insularity that blight the B&S mothership have not only been transferred to the Looper raft, they've actually become the band's shuffling raison d'jtre. The fact that Looper have managed to transcend such obvious limitations, however, is testament to both David's strength as a songwriter and the fathomless charm that characterises their candy-sweet oeuvre.

While tonight, songs such as '(All Of) These Things' whirr with a winningly shambolic ilan, it's their new-found dancified direction that nabs the ace pop trophy. It may be a wide-eyed, resolutely childlike view of techno that stampedes through new album 'The Geometrid' - tonight played in its (almost) entirety and accompanied by a suitably grainy selection of home videos - but it's damn-near impossible not to be swayed by the sparkling pop fortitude of the likes of 'Bug Rain' and fab dance oddity 'Mondo '77'.

Looper have defied the odds and come up trumps. Who would have thought?