3 out of 5

Label: Rough Trade

Produced by: Micachu and the Shapes?

There’s definitely always been a tough of no-wave to Mica Levi’s Micachu releases, though its been distilled by the group’s pop sensibilities to a certain degree.  ‘Good Sad’ is mostly stripped of that, though, as if Mica is responding to the positive attention received from her Under the Skin score by fighting against any urge to produce something… tuneful.  The album still swerves into quirk – like the Park Life-esque chatter of “Thinking It,” and opener “Sad,” with its busy drums and sound effects, but elsewhere The Shapes go a step beyond no-wave into disassembly.  What U.S. Maple did for rock, this album seems to want to do with pop, resulting in percussive bleats where Mica is barely holding a tune atop it.  But instead of this coming across as fuck-off sloppiness, there’s a sense of… restraint? to the sound, that makes you trust in its purpose.  At times the group pushes it – Waiting, after the gloriously mournful Crushed, is plain-jane minimalism, leading into the brash Unity – but then the group builds back up with sketches of tunes and the strong closer Suffering, which gets bolder and more confident as it goes along, making it a fitting concluding track.

There’s something wayward about the disc that prevents it from being as grabbing as Jewellry, but it’s still certainly Micachu, bounced through several filters of reverb and drunkenly staggering from track to track, barely holding a beat; it’s maybe a bit too bare for fresh listeners, I dunno, but it’s an interesting response to where Mica’s been recently, and does satisfy the oddball non-pop styling needs the group has previously provided.