album // The Snare
The Snare was Looper's third album
and their first - and to date only - album for Mute Records.
I originally assumed that Looper - sometime Belle And Sebastian
man Stuart David (vocals, vibes, rhodes, bass, organ, mellotron
and beats), Evil Bob (sax, beats, bass, guiro and backing
vocals), Ronnie Black (guitar) and Karn David (hammer
dulcimer, vocals) - were American, but it turns out that they hail
from Glasgow, Scotland. They certainly don't sound remotely Scottish,
but then again The Snare certainly doesn't sound like anything
else released on Mute as far as I can tell - this is soft, meditative
folksy Portishead-referencing downbeat music, full of soft beats
that could have been created for R&B or even slowed-down drum
n' bass, reggae basslines and fluttering Asian instruments. There's
also Barry Adamson-esque vibes, flute and brass. Central
to all of this are the soft, almost conspiratorially-whispered vocals
of Stuart, somewhere between Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker and
yet altogether somewhere else entirely.
The Looper story is quite complicated. Formed in
1997 as a trio of Stuart, Karn and Ronnie, they went on the release
two well-received albums, Up A Tree and The Geometrid,
both via the esteemed US label Sub Pop. They met Evil Bob on a US
tour, introducing them to his friend, Glaswegian Peacock Johnson
with whom he had tried to release a dance single. Stuart David was
inspired by these efforts and captured the story of this single
in his second book. Johnson got upset about David taking all the
credit for the book, leading to a vociferous spat and a long period
of silence from Looper. Eventually, it was agreed that Peacock would
be able to use Looper as a means of finally bringing his musical
ideas to fruition, ultimately producing the album. He does not play
anywhere on The Snare, but his handle-bar-moustachioed visage
adorns the cover, and one of the singles ('The Snare'), the sleeve
even goes so far as to say 'Catch up with Peacock Johnson and the
band at...' and prints his web address! It kind of leaves
you wondering who really drove this car, and by all accounts The
Snare is a very different album to Looper's previous two.
There is an atmospheric air to tracks such as 'New
York Snow', which contains a filmic, chilled ambience with undercurrents
of deceit and betrayal. Mystery and suspense, along with the good
old fashioned entrapment of love characterise The Snare's
ruminative songs. These are fragile, meditative songs informed by
soul and chill out music, each a tight, sedate and minmalist parcel
of muted funk. It's hushed and unhurried and highly intimate, the
kind of jazz-inflected music I'd expect to drift out of the darkest
corners of a smoky New York club (hence my errant belief that they
were of US provenance). Just check out the easy swing of 'Lover's
Leap' and you'll know where I'm coming from.
On the first few listens there is very little to
differentiate The Snare's sultry tracks, but persevering
yields some really outstanding moments, such as the shamefully self-aggrandising
'Peacock Johnson', in which singer Debbie Poole weaves an air of
mystery and intrigue around the central character. I was actually
intending to slant this review negatively - at first I could barely
distinguish one track from the other since the same pallette of
sounds and drum patterns appeared to be used throughout; whilst
that narrow choice of instrumentation is undoubtedly there, Looper
conjure vivid emotions and images with this economy of elements.
Persistence is key here, but equally throw it on the CD player for
a post-club chilldown or as background music to a trendy West London
dinner party if you haven't got the time and it'll work just as
well.
My personal favourites are the final two numbers
- the sinister 'This Evil Love' with its plaintive theme of inescapable
lust, including some clever us of silent passages; and the positively
Bacharach-esque brushed snares and organ lines of closer 'Fucking
Around', a pretty song that blurs having fun and casual sex together
in its lighthearted message, providing a strangely defiant and almost
euphoric close to this easy-to-misread album.
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