Album Review: Sneaker Pimps - Squaring The Circle (2021)

Nineteen years is a long time between the release of albums, yet the fully formed return of Sneaker Pimps in 2021 might have you believing they never really went away. They did, for roughly a decade, while key protagonists Chris Corner and Liam Howe pursued other projects. Corner kept busy with an underrated solo project called IAMX, while Howe has been quite prolific as a production guru for many of pop music’s good, great, and downright awful.

 I was a bit of an IAMX fan for a few years around a decade ago, and I thought Corner’s 2009 album (as IAMX), Kingdom of Welcome Addiction, was one of those beneath-the-radar gems that often tend to slip by unnoticed and unloved, sans much promotion or media interest.

Squaring The Circle is album number four for Sneaker Pimps, and whilst there’s no real banger to match the band’s best-known hit ‘6 Underground’, which went top ten in 1997, there’s plenty here to keep old - and presumably some new - fans happy.

There’s no real change in formula, and although the wider pop-electronica genre no longer enjoys the same level of hype it did during the band’s phase-one pomp, Sneaker Pimps are past masters of the art, and improvements in technology have doubtlessly aided a seamless comeback for Corner and Howe.

Anyone expecting “progression” or a change in approach might be disappointed. If anything, this is slightly more lightweight than earlier Sneaker Pimps work, fitting rather more neatly into the pop realm than might have been anticipated – particularly when you consider how bleak or challenging some of Corner’s solo work became.

Corner takes care of much of the vocal duties, but there’s a nice balance across the entire album thanks to the shared vocal presence of the multi-talented Simonne Jones, who adds elements of light to soothe or counter Corner’s often angsty darker edge.

At 16 tracks it’s a relatively generous listen and it feels as though Squaring The Circle deliberately builds to some sort of mid-album peak before tapering off slightly. Certainly, my own favourite tracks sit snug within the album’s core … the likes of ‘Stripes’, ‘Black Rain’, and ‘Love Me Stupid’, even though the pre-release singles - ‘Fighter’ and the title track - feature as album bookends.

All told, Squaring The Circle is pretty decent, and a pleasant surprise.