Micachu and the Shapes “Jewellery” Review

British musician Mica Levi, known by her nom de guerre “Micachu,” recently released her debut album, Jewellery, in the UK and though the young artist has yet to make a splash across seas the record just might be the force that propels her and her backing band, the Shapes, onto U.S. airwaves. Jewellery was produced by avant garde electronic musician Matthew Herbert, and while it has enough hooks to be mainstream, it also packs in enough weirdness to get some play at your art school friend’s next studio party. The balance is a rare find: complicated music that isn’t a pain in the ass to listen to.

Though generally labeled an experimental musician, Micachu claims to be a pop artist. Really she falls into some murky area between the two. The lead track off of Jewellery, “Vulture,” starts off in the latter direction with Marc Bell’s quick time drum beats, Raisa Kahn’s keys, and Mica’s (albeit oddly tuned) guitar forming the base for what seems destined to become a dance track. Just when you expect the big hooky chorus to come around the bend though, the band crashes into a wall of distortion, with the guitar and drums falling off of a cliff and hitting every ledge on the way down. When the chorus does finally hit it is some manic circus organ driven thing, with Levi singing “You can’t eat me/I’m still not dead” over it. It’s kind of fucked up but somehow it works.

That essentially forms the palette for the rest of the record—throughout it you just learn to expect the unexpected. The 53 second “Sweetheart” contains a big skuzzy M.I.A.-esque beat that quickly devolves into super distorted guitar and quirky little blips and beeps. Like a Ramones song, just when you think you have a handle on where it’s going, the damn thing is finished. And short song length isn’t the only trait Micachu shares with Punk either, where Punk took a Dadaist approach to restructuring Pop music, Levi instead turns it inside out. The pop hooks are still recognizable in form, but only in a distorted way that leaves you to guess at their original nature. For instance “Turn me Well”‘s lackadaisical chorus might sound quite a bit more conventional except for the fact that it is largely being played on a vacuum cleaner.

The most obvious example of the pop/experimental dichotomy here is “Calculator” which occasionally borrows the guitar intro from the Champs’ “Tequila,” only to suck it into something far more abstract. While eclectic orchestration like this often comes off as pretentious and intentionally obtuse, the what’s left of the song’s underlying pop structure is enough to convince the listener that the band is only having a bit of fun. The only real downside in this case is that the experimentation and playfulness that mark the musicianship don’t really extend to Levi’s vocals. Her lyrics are generally all delivered in a cadenced monotone that attests to Levi’s Grime/Dubstep roots. It’s generally not a huge factor but it can occasionally trick the ear into confusing songs with each other, even though the instrumentation is far different in each.

Overall Jewellery is quite a good listen. If you are the kind of music fan who gets turned off by words like “obtuse” and “experimental”—fear not—I am probably just getting a little too carried away. There is something for listeners of all stripes here, whether you calculate how much you like an album mathematically or you just like to get down.

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Also: Micachu and the Shapes & Dessa @ Cedar Cultural Center