Audio By Carbonatix
In the indie-rock canon, the Pacific Northwest gets its rep mostly from its Seattle and Olympia greats. Makes sense–Washington state’s Pacific neighbors, Portland and British Columbia, Canada, haven’t had important record labels such as Sub Pop and K to push their best bands. But the best Pac-NW album of the year is just a ferry ride away from Seattle, and perhaps the short distance (and free Canadian health care) was all it took for Victoria, B.C.’s Shapes and Sizes to craft such a captivating love letter to the region. The quartet’s self-titled debut is easy to geographically spot, from the Built to Spill guitar-rock hooks in “Weekends at a Time” to the Sleater-Kinney grrl-gruff on “Goldenhead,” but much harder to pin down, as songs frequently transform and shapeshift–not spastically but tastefully–in the best pop-rock combo of ambition and catchiness released so far this year (basically, if the insanity and bravado of Deerhoof was a lot less annoying).
Opener “Island’s Gone Bad” is indie-rock’s Lord of the Flies, as a soft Modest Mouse-style open about a stranded relationship explodes into a manic-depressive, trumpet-loaded romp: “I like eating fruit out of trees when I’m with you,” Caila Thompson-Hannant wails (her voice a perfect cross between S-K’s too-loud Corin Tucker and Cowboy Junkies’ too-quiet Margot Timmins) while the rest of the band chants panic beneath her beauty: “Children going mad, eating moms, eating dads.” And the bleak horn section and minor-key flicks of guitar on “Wilderness” recall the lush melancholy of the Notwist before the song transforms into a quirky, piano-pop take on the head-bobbery of the Starlight Mints. After listening to these 10 dizzying songs, you might need free Canadian health care too–Shapes and Sizes could make you pass out.
