PULLING SHAPES

Appropriate name for Micachu & The Shapes’ debut album is Jewellery. Being, as it is, made up of lots of small pieces (most songs are about two minutes), some that go together and others that are stunning on their own – lo-fi collages of pops, whirrs, fuzz , shuffling beats and twitching guitars.

The distorted (by feedback and scrunched electronics) folk of ‘Curly Teeth’ and ‘Floor’ are barely distinguishable, as are woolly punk-pop numbers ‘Sweetheart’ and ‘Calculator’.  But then there’s the murky ‘Guts’ and addictive twang of ‘Golden Phone’ (a potential hit if re-released on Rough Trade, the label Micachu – aka Mica Levi – signed to last week) that sound like little else on this album or anyone else’s.

Sounds rather than words seem to be most important to Levi. She makes mixtapes, composes classical pieces and builds instruments, and in an interview with Plan B called her lyrics “a load of old bollocks that rhyme”. There are some evocative lines though on ‘Worst Bastard’ (“You were so plastered, I’m afraid that you misheard/Devil took you over and you never said a word”) and ‘Wrong’ (“If I pierce your heart it is bound to sting”). And the description of her lyrics on ‘Just In Case’ as “a jungle of words” is apt for the rest of this tangled, intriguing record.

Out: now, Label: Accidental UPDATE: release date has been put back to 9 March for a release on Rough Trade. In the meantime, here’s a nice interview between Micachu and Emmy The Great on Drowned in Sound.

Micachu & The Shapes – Lips