Micachu and The Shapes - Jewellery
Micachu’s first album, recorded with her band The Shapes, proves not only that the 21-year-old East Londoner, Guildhall School graduate has got talent but she is startlingly original as well. Produced by Matthew Herbert, Jewellery consists of songs that are often short and filled with jambled sounds and mixed beats. But once you get past the assault on your aural senses, you find the album is more than held together with some great sonic pop songs and an individual personality that is noticeably absent in similar dance/indie/art school crossovers.
The music is chaotic – unsurprising given Micachu formerly played classical music while moonlighting as a grime MC and DJ at pirate radio stations around the capital - but with Herbert at the helm they’ve got a strong beat for all the bits and pieces to orbit around. It might sound like they threw all the crockery and cutlery out of the window, but if the knives, forks and plates hit the ground sequentially, at roughly the same interval and at about 80 bpm - you can dance to that. Incidentally she is fond of using household objects in her music with a vacuum cleaner making an appearance on ‘Turn Me Well’ (one of the more gentle moments on the album) and she has been known to take it on stage as well. The band’s preferred brand is a Henry Hoover apparently.
There are songs too. About spurned lovers, life being tough and setting an example in avoiding STDs, and it is probably these that hold the album together and sustain the listeners’ interest. The record opens with ‘Vulture’, which has a grinding accompaniment and shuffling backbeat with a chorus that protests “you can’t eat me/I’m still not dead” before descending into a lot of noise at the end.
Quite a bit has been written about the second track ‘Lips’, primarily because it lasts for one minute 20 second with a 25 second intro. It’s certainly short but it was only once reading praise in the press that this writer realised the length – primarily because its lasts for exactly the right amount of time and is never abrupt. The next song ‘Sweetheart’ is even shorter at 53 seconds and is a splurge of personality ending naturally in the sound of someone puking – not the only time the sound is deployed to good effect. Last year’s single ‘Golden Phone’ is more of a proper radio hit while giving the impression that’s its opening seams are letting some of that aforementioned crockery fall to the floor.
It all culminates in a thoroughly exciting album from a prospect for the future, but one you can enjoy in the present.
Mini review
Probably the most inventive album of the year, Jewellery sounded like no other and continually won fans from across the board – crowned the alternative Mercury prize winner (Speech Debelle, who r ya). Although the listener wanted to hear every note, Micachu confessed to getting incredibly impatient with her songs. A bad habit perhaps but a habit that leads to an abundance of ideas and hooks on each track. We’ll see if the 21-year old grows more patient with age but then we’d have been watching her next move regardless. (Pete Hurst)
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