Yet Another Micachu Post – I Like It!

As usual, I am late to the party here, but I did want to chime in to say that I like this Micachu & The Shapes album as well. Honestly, I was not quite sure what to expect from an album that I have heard described as both "grimy" and "primal." But I am enjoying this record a lot -- the balance of ballsy-enough-to-be-structurally-jarring dissonance and cool, confident melody actually reminds me of Enon's still-excellent first album Believo!. The pointy sonic baubles of Jewellry are dizzyingly dynamic, and though they may come off as overwhelming and a little scary at first, they quickly reveal themselves to be both purposeful and personable (not unlike the cockroaches in Joe's Apartment). The songs on Jewellery aren't "hidden" by these noises, they are forged of them. In other words, this is not a case of "pop songs" hiding underneath "distortion" -- in Micachu's capable hands, the grime is brought to the surface, and somehow molded into intricate and appealing patterns. Mica Levi's smooth and confident voice actually makes perfect sense -- there is a feeling of mastery to this album; a cool and almost magical command of chaos and discordance, equal parts composition and conjuring. What really excites me about Jewellery is that its frequent elaborate and/or disjointed gestures never come off as gratuitous or self-serving. One of my favorite critical exercises, for better or worse, is to listen for moments when the idea behind a part of a song overpowers the song itself -- ie, "ok, this is where we modulate unexpectedly to the second chord in the verse," "that static noise in the background will get louder until it swallows up the song," etc. To my delight, Jewellery consistently kept me guessing. Case in point: the herky-jerk rhythm that opens "Wrong" (my favorite song on the record) is fleshed out out to a consistent groove, and then distilled to its most basic, forceful accents. These are both great ideas, but they don't sound like ideas -- simply put, they sound great.

- Matt LeMay