The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
CD Reviews  |  Classical  |  Live Reviews  |  Music Features
Nominate-best-2010

Micachu & the Shapes | Jewellery

Rough Trade (2009)
By ZETH LUNDY  |  March 23, 2009
3.0 3.0 Stars

090327_Michachu_m

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.
Related: Review: Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Are Animal Collective a jam band?, Photos: Animal Collective at House of Blues (2009), More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , Animal Collective, Animal Collective, Hot Chip,  More more >
  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • RSS feed
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article
HTML Prohibited
Add Comment

[ 02/10 ]   Sarah Levecque Band  @ Precinct
[ 02/10 ]   DJ Znuh + DJ Mothra + Punketta Doilie  @ Wonder Bar
[ 02/10 ]   Nima Samimi  @ Midway Café
[ 02/10 ]   Fandango  @ Toad
ARTICLES BY ZETH LUNDY
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   FELA KUTI | THE ’69 L.A. SESSIONS  |  February 09, 2010
    Amiri Baraka put it best in his poem "In the Funk World": "If Elvis Presley is King/Who is James Brown, God?" So, by that logic, is Fela Anikulapo Kuti higher than or equal to God?
  •   BASIA BULAT | HEART OF MY OWN  |  January 27, 2010
    Like a Laurel Canyon Billie Holiday or a pixilated Tracy Chapman, Bulat sports a voice rich with vibrato, hearty oomph, and dignified lonesomeness.
  •   SPOON | TRANSFERENCE  |  January 13, 2010
    Any year now, Spoon will release an album consisting of one 35-minute unfailing groove anchored by bass and peppered with erratic guitar-chord grunts and Britt Daniel's wordless exclamations ("Awright!") — an idealized endgame that distills the band's reductive technique to its purest state.
  •   VARIOUS ARTISTS | CASUAL VICTIM PILE: AUSTIN 2010  |  January 06, 2010
    The notion that regional musical flavors exist independently in American cities is quickly becoming an archaic truism, seeing as how the world really is a stage these days, at least in the digital sense.
  •   CHARLOTTE HATHERLEY | NEW WORLDS  |  December 16, 2009
    Charlotte Hatherley is to the 1990s as the Black Crowes are to the 1960s: not a revivalist, mind you, but a sympathizer — a careerist.

 See all articles by: ZETH LUNDY

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2010 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group