Looper
Dingwalls, London ***

Escaping your past can be tricky. Geri will always be an ex-Spice Girl, Robbie forever the cheeky one in Take That. For Stuart David it's his bass-playing with Belle and Sebastian that he wants to bury. Now he's got his own band.

Looper is the moonlight stint that turned into the day job. And quite a tiring one at that, with all dates on the current British tour, except London and Glasgow, cancelled due to exhaustion. Melancholy poets obviously aren't made of stern stuff.

Looper include David's wife Karn and his brother Ronnie, and we get a glimpse into this family affair thanks to two screens behind the band. Home videos are projected on the left-hand screen; on the right, photographs of the things and people that inspired each song are flashed up. It's rather like looking through someone's photo album.

All this multimedia stuff detracts from the songs, which are fragile glimpses of episodes in David's life. "This song is about being scared of the dark, even in the daylight," he explains, introducing On the Flipside, the sound of sunshine belying the terror in the lyrics, as distant vocals are married to looping drums and subtle bleeps. These are the contradictions that Looper play with, making Ibiza tunes for indie kids.

For the encore Looper return to the stage, only to admit they haven't got any more songs. As David reprises These Things, accompanied only on keyboards, the strength and beauty of the melody shines through. He can beat it up all he likes, but you can't keep a good song down.