Up a Tree

Although Looper is a Belle and Sebastian side project, fans of the Scottish group's lush, wispy pop confections looking for similar sounds here will be sorely disappointed -- on his own, Stuart David rejects the ornate strings and horns of B&S in favor of electronic textures and trip-hop beats, and while there's a definite pop dimension to Up a Tree, it's secondary at best. The album is cut from the same cloth as David's "Spaceboy Dream" from B&S' The Boy with the Arab Strap, the lone bit of filler on an otherwise extraordinary record; his fascination with electronica reaches a much greater potential here, but there's still no shaking the feeling that Up a Tree was released thanks solely to its pedigree, and without regard to its actual merit.