** Looper

THE GEOMETRID

(Sub Pop)

Stuart David may have quasi-abdicated Belle & Sebastian's bass slot to concentrate on his own brand of bedsit electronica, but you'd hardly know it from his second album under the Looper banner. The building blocks of The Geometrid are as modestly scaled as those of last year's In a Tree: Tinkertoy breakbeats, one-finger keyboard lines, the leader's dry Glaswegian accent, and the occasional flash of graceful melody à la pre-cabaret Magnetic Fields, courtesy of David's wife, Karn. (A couple of extra members are credited this time, though one suspects they're more involved in the band's multimedia live presentations.) David and company are at their best when commenting on the increasing everydayness of technology: "Modem Song" builds its rhythm from familiar dial-up noises, and one track ruefully narrates David's (unsuccessful) attempt to "teach my robot to write all my songs." Unfortunately, these conceptual strengths go hand-in-hand with some musical weaknesses: several beats are sparse to the point of monotony, and several throwaways pad an already slight 35 minutes of music. The charm of Looper's hi-tech naïveté has its limits, and the band seem to recognize this as well as anyone -- as Karn sings in "Tomorrow's World," "This is the year the future turned sad."

-- Franklin Bruno