If any artist might find a spiritual home in a disused urban car park turned experimental art space, it’s Mica Levi. Since dazzling audiences and critics alike with her 2009 debut, Jewellery, Levi has consistently rewritten the rules of pop with Micachu & The Shapes’ off-kilter melodies, unpredictable rhythms, deliberate distortion and unlikely instrumentation. So showcasing new songs amid bales of hay and blocks of concrete in the centre of Peckham should be a pushover.
Sadly not. Micachu & The Shapes’ much-prized freedom is immediately imprisoned by the awful sound quality of the brutalist surroundings. The clarity demanded by Levi’s deadpan, rough-hewn vocal style and fitful music is replaced instead by indistinct drones on the dirge-like Mash One, which takes its lead not from the band’s playful art-pop past but Levi’s sparse, eerie and decidedly downbeat Bafta award-nominated soundtrack for 2014 film Under The Skin.
The mood continues into material from the band’s upcoming third album, the brilliant Good Sad Happy Bad. Levi’s voice is yearning and childlike on the wistful Sea Air, while on Relaxing the band sound like Blur waltzing with the Velvet Underground at the end of a run-down pier. However, the album highlight Oh Baby is ruined by constant low-grade chatter from a portion of the sold-out 150-capacity crowd, although most nod their heads in time to the chiming, groove-laden ballad.
Good Sad Happy Bad was the unexpected result of an extended jam session and it sometimes feels like Micachu & The Shapes are still working through the songs. The three-piece play in a triangle shape on the low stage, keyboardist Raisa Khan smiling at Levi, who turns her back to play guitar to exuberant drummer Marc Pell. But even when Levi invites the audience to draw closer, little feels inclusive about the performance. The final song, Lips, does prove to be a pertinent reminder of how brilliant this band really are. But car parks don’t make great music venues.
- At Oval Space, London on 5 November. Box office: 020-7183 4422.
