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Track Listings
| 1. Vulture |
| 2. Lips |
| 3. Sweetheart |
| 4. Eat Your Heart |
| 5. Curly Teeth |
| 6. Golden Phone |
| 7. Ship |
| 8. Floor |
| 9. Just In Case |
| 10. Calculator |
| 11. Wrong |
| 12. Turn Me Well |
| 13. Guts |
Product Description
Review
21-year old Mica Levi is quickly shaping up as one of the year's top tips-for-the-top. Not that she's a reality TV competition winner or well groomed pop princess, instead she creates a fractured, unhinged music that blends several sources to end up sounding not much like anyone else currently out there.
Which is not to say she is doing anything original. No, the sound she creates on guitar and electronics (accompanied by Raisa Khan on keyboards and Marc Pell on drums) is quite conventional indie rock with borrowings from all over - there's grime and dubstep, Gary Numan and Nine Inch Nails, Tricky and X Ray Spex - but the way she meshes them together, playing fast and jittery, layering sounds, leaving lots of hiss and clutter in, makes her stand out from today's Brit rock pack.
How brightly she will stand out is debatable: she is no singer, preferring to mutter garbled lyrics - the effect is like listening to someone speaking too fast on the phone - and there is no melody or rhythm here that will appeal to those who like conventional structure in their pop. But the hype has already started with the likes of Guardian blogger Everett True claiming "Micachu is an exceedingly precocious 21-year-old who may go on to completely transform our expectations of music." Everett used to make great claims for Courtney Love so best to ignore such rhetoric - Micachu & The Shapes are conventionally unconventional, edgy and noisy as youth like to be, but in need of stronger songwriting if they want to appeal beyond rock writers who like to champion anything they consider dissonant.
As a debut album this suggests promise, but promise of what is unclear: rock music is now so played out that it is impossible to surprise listeners. For now, nothing here suggests making music for Micachu isn't just gap year fun before the real challenges of life begin. --Garth Cartwright
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everything and The Kitchen Sink,
By
This review is from: Jewellery (Audio CD)
I would appear to have stumbled over this wonderful
album far later than the rest of the listening world! Better late than never is, however, a fitting adage. Micachu is Mica Levi and she is joined by The Shapes (Marc Pell/drums and Raisa Khan/keyboards) here and there. Much has been made about the "experimental" nature of these fourteen compositions. I rather feel that Ms Levi's muse is touched by the spirit of pop than by the deeper excesses of the contemporary European avante garde. Some reviewers have also been less than kind about her voice but I rather like what she does with it. It's a clipped and cocky instrument with a limited tonal range but what she lacks in vocal prowess she more than makes up for with her hugely addictive compositional style and droll sense of humour. For goodness sake listen to 'Golden Phone' as soon as you are able. It bursts out of the speakers with the kind of joyous sunny optimism which long, hot summers should all be made of! I defy you not to be drawn in by its gloriously ribald rhythms and party-time handclaps! 'Eat Your Heart', too, leaps up and down like a pit-bull terrier on a space hopper. The strangled yodelling vocal pitched somewhere between George Formby's ukelele innocence and Tom Wait's down-at-the-waterfront-dive darkness. Some of the songs are less than two minutes long but still manage to pack a punch and raise a smile simultaneously. The sweet little revenge song 'Floor', gritty and grinding 'Lips' and the perky final track 'Hardcore' are three such gems. 'Turn Me Well' introduces us to the contents of Ms Levi's understairs cupboard. A number of useful household objects would appear to have been brought creatively into play in the mix (I'm pretty sure she has found a secondary use for her vacuum cleaner in the opening bars!) Delightfully barmy! 'Calculator' is as mad as a box of frogs too in the nicest possible way. It's hard not to warm to the guilessless of it all! If I had thumbs they'd both be in the air right now for this splendidly idiosyncratic and unconventional debut! Highly Recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
totally original lo-fi pop,
By
This review is from: Jewellery (Audio CD)
The best album of 2009 in my opinion. I urge you to listen to it - it will only take 37 minutes of your time! Yes, the tracks are (sometimes infuriatingly) short, especially in these times where a 6 minute-long track is considered standard. But that's pretty much my only misgiving, and that doesn't really count as a criticism. There are a few great ones to dance to (Vulture, Lips, Golden Phone) and a few melodic and lyrical masterpieces (Floor, Turn Me Well) and some lovely sonic experimentation (Eat Your Heart, Curly Teeth). The only track I don't like is the Ship one. The guest "rapper" sounds a little creepy, but that doesn't impinge on the 5 stars that it so rightly deserves.
Oh - and I saw them live. The fact that they're not propped up by technical trickery does not at all compromise their sound. (Some tracks even sound better without all the hoovers and pots and pans and what-not.) And they didn't just play the songs off the album - there are much more corkers to come from these plucky young'uns!)
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wierd and Briiliant!!,
This review is from: Jewellery (Audio CD)
this has to be one of the most individual and brilliant sounding albums i've ever bought!
with its random bleeps and squeels, and an overall chaotic feel, this album may not appeal to everyone. anyone looking for a conventional sounding indie album may find it dissapointing but if your looking for something different, individual and genre shattering, then micachu should be right up your street. in my opinion there is only one bad track which is "ship", but all of the others are brilliant (despite the fact that they rarely exceed three minutes). particular highlights are "Lips", "Golden Phone" and "Calculator"
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