4 out of 5

Label: Rough Trade

Produced by: Mica Levi and Matthew “Lemons” Herbert

The ghost of Glen Galaxy seems to haunt Mica Levi, picking up some influence from ‘Think Tank’ era Damon Albarn, resulting in the mish-mash of wowing random-sounds-as-songs and head-bobbing beats, sprinkled with a vague international flavor that produce ‘Jewellery,’ Mica’s debut disc as Micachu, with backup from the Shapes on select tracks.

‘Jewellery’ barrels into your ears with ear-pleasing rapacious burbles of stop-start rhythms and grabbing, syncopated percussion.  ‘Vulture’ nips at that Glen Galaxy cache I mentioned – Truman’s Water, Soul Junk – with its sudden veerings into distortion before veering just as suddenly back to a quirky verse – but Mica makes the sound her own with a sharp ear for production (sharing credit with Matthew Herbert), knowing how and when to manipulate the mix to keep this from sounding like a mess, as well as oddball but not dismissable lyrics.  On first listen, the disc sounds more experiment-y than it is thanks to tracks like ‘Lips’ and ‘Sweetheart,’ which deliver some type of grabbing rhythm for about a minute and then just stop; however, going through the album several times, this vibe matches with the overall jagged pacing that exists from start to finish.  The Soul-Junk vibe really hits on ‘Eat Your Heart,’ which could honestly have appeared on any of SJ’s more hip-hop influenced discs.  Thankfully, Levi has a much more pleasing control over her vocals, limited though they may be, somehow tunefully applying a monotone mumble to match the muted beats of the track.

And so it goes across the disc, with notable variations on the style cropping up on ‘Ship,’ or the poppy ‘Calculator,’ the former track given the ‘Think Tank’ vibe, perhaps thanks to vocals from Man Like Me (no idea who that is, but his additions on the track are obvious), and the latter track giving us a base nibbled from 90s Brit-pop in general.  The first half of the album absolutely shines, but thereafter some of the glimmer fades.  Many of the songs are constructed similarly, though they may employ some nuance, and unfortunately this means its easier to let the second half blend together, especially toward the tail end of the disc, where the slower, quieter ‘Turn Me Well’ and ‘Guts’ can actually act as as pure, sweet pop tracks without the more jarring Micachu-ness found elsewhere.  These are all good songs, but the problem with sounding so unique is that when you do something more straight-forward, it slinks past the ears.

Still, this is an awesome debut, both accessible and artistically rewarding.  The combo of certain factors – Mica’s youth, 22 at the time of this release, it appearing on Rough Trade, the presence of homemade instruments – might make one assume that this is just a flavor-of-the-month release, but Levi is one of those true musical savants, where the final product feels like a true expression of something and not just a happy accident of momentum.