A little while ago, I raved about Micachu and the Shapes’ previous single, ‘Lips,’ for its uncategorisable, off-the-wall out-and-out brilliance. ‘Golden Phone’ is more of the same. By which I don’t mean it sounds like its predecessor, but that it’s another nugget of wildly inventive music, with equal emphasis on both wild! and inventive! I can’t even begin to imagine what instruments have been used in the recording of ‘Golden Phone,’ and suspect they’ve even created a few especially. To describe the swirling sonic cauldron from which Mica and her accomplices perform aural alchemy would be like attempting to define the parameters of the cosmos, and besides, it would spoil the magic. And magic it is.
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It’s great that a label like Rough Trade have signed Micachu and the Shapes: after all, they’re perhaps not the most obvious choice. But in a time when there’s so much slick, formulaic and grimly uninspired (and uninspiring) music around, Micachu and the Shapes are the perfect antidote. Refreshing? Hell yeah! Theirs is a sound that’s entirely their own, breezy but not facile, low-fi without being amateurish. Few bands can claim to be truly unique, but ‘Golden Phones’ suggests that Micachu and the Shapes are just that.
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