CD Reviews

Micachu & the Shapes | Jewellery

Rough Trade (2009)

By ZETH LUNDY | March 23, 2009

3.0 Stars

The brief and ebullient debut by 21-year old Mica Levy et al. is so tic-ridden and childlike, and so packed with dissonant non-chords and chirping calls of hand-clapped rhythm, you'd think a pack of kids had picked out the instruments and written the arrangements. In fact, Jewellery's regressive auditory freakout is part of its greater complexity.

Listen closely and you'll hear pastoral English twee, Carl Stalling cartoon music, bull-headed hardcore, early rock and roll, and nicks of contemporaries like Animal Collective and Hot Chip. And that's just the first track. The rest of the songs, produced by microhouse man Matthew Herbert, eagerly follow suit, like Pop Rocks in a stomach full of Coca-Cola, or caroming candy-coated pinballs.

Levy's unorthodox and, in some cases, homemade instruments strum and stutter with calculated abandon; her heavy British accent slumps itself across this glitchy bubblegum arcade and blunts it, as she sings of everything from premature scavengers and math problems to matters of the heart that need not be so intelligible.

Topics: CD Reviews , Animal Collective, Animal Collective, Hot Chip, More

| More

view all

ARTICLES BY ZETH LUNDY

SUN KIL MOON | AMONG THE LEAVES | May 22, 2012
The first thing you'll notice about Mark Kozelek's fifth LP as Sun Kil Moon are song titles that would give Morrissey a boner.

THE FIGGS | THE DAY GRAVITY STOPPED | May 15, 2012
These days Mike Gent, Pete Donnelly, and Pete Hayes are involved in enough extracurricular activities (Graham Parker, NRBQ, countless side/session-men gigs) that you could hardly blame them if they closed their two decades-plus Figgs chapter.

BILLY BRAGG + WILCO | MERMAID AVENUE: THE COMPLETE SESSIONS | May 01, 2012
In 1998, and again in 2000, English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg teamed up with Wilco— not yet on their post-Americana trip — to put unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics to music.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT | OUT OF THE GAME | April 24, 2012
Out of the Game is being billed as the most "pop" album of Rufus Wainwright's career, which is to say that it dismisses many of his trademark classical and/or stagey affinities.

THE DANDY WARHOLS | THIS MACHINE | April 17, 2012
The title of the Dandy Warhols' eighth record may be a Woody Guthrie allusion, but don't fret — the closest the Portland, Oregon, band get to politics here is a cover of Merle Travis's "16 Tons."