It’s not that Shapes don’t fit easily into one genre; it’s more that they fit too easily into many. But not through some lack of focus or waywardness of direction- anything but. As they slip effortlessly from one sound or style into another, and then another… and another, you realize that it is a sense of adventure and uninhibited creativity that drives their meandering all over the musical map. And if they are even aware of the musical rule book, they certainly don’t feel it applies to them.
‘Nature Girl’ lays out their sonic stall perfectly; in under a minute, it has gone from a seductive soul-rock groove to almost proggy riffery, a minute and a half on from that and we find ourselves in the sort of jazz-rock territory that Steely Dan would have called home, and then it rounds off through a sort of noodling but ultimately ambient outro. Yes, that is a lot to fit into one song, but it never feels as if they are doing anything other than what comes naturally.
‘The Barron’s Memoirs’ runs a similar sonic gamut, driving a spoken-word, cosmic fairy tale, in the vein of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, only with more swearing!
‘Rebel Merchant’ sits in a place where Barry White and Frank Zappa share space on the musical Venn Diagram. A small sector, admittedly, but the sensuality of one and the forward-thinking of the other merge into an understated funk shot through with more rock and roll urges that can only be found in this lovely liminal land.
Having already broken down most of the musical demarcations and, if not stormed the barricades, at least got their gatekeepers too high to care, they proceed to wreck expectations, traditions, and comfort zones. ‘The Last Oasis’ is a New Orleans street orchestra hired to play a lounge jazz set in Midtown Manhattan, and things end with The Showdown, a trippy, jittery, funky, slick, and seductive riot of styles…as if they are jamming along to a spinning Wheel of Fortune that keeps dictating which new styles to drop in. The fact that they do this without breaking their stride speaks volumes.
As always, it is not the musical building blocks that are the focus here; it is how a band can take so many, all of different shapes (ha!) and sizes, and textures and weights, and bring them together to build such scintillating sonic architecture. But that’s Shapes for you!
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