I'll just start by saying I prefer Shapes and Sizes' lead female singer, Caila Thompson-Hannant, to their lead male singer, Rory Seydel. When the Asthmatic Kitty band's debut starts, you hear Seydel, who has the dissolute, whiny, post-Pavement voice of your average scrawny indie boy. The song doesn't get going until Thompson-Hannant comes in at 2:23, but when she does, it's a grabber: the drums take up a heavy beat while the guitar resorts to a squiggly thing behind Thompson-Hannant's tall, brazen voice. She sings the way a Southern belle declares, announcing her words like a waitress with your take-out order, and bellowing like she's never lowered her eyes in a fight or used nuance in place of honesty. "I love eating fruit off of trees/ When I'm with you," she proclaims, reaching for high notes and shaking them in her fist, and when the other voices start chanting in time, it all sounds like the work of a cleaned-up no wave band.
That's two different ideas in just the first track-- the rest of Shapes and Sizes' debut album goes in more directions than it has songs to hold them. For several cuts, jittery chamber pop pours out behind Thompson-Hannant's swoops and the kitchen sink arrangements of horns and ukelele. But other times, the frenzy bleeds into the songs that demand more gravity: Her showcase ballad, "Northern Lights", has a few too many overdramatic thrusts and warbles, making it feel showy when she could have sung it straight. Closer "Boy, You Shouldn't Have" is pitched as a rootsy country number, but they don't sell the grit. And the only straight-up indie rock song, "Oh No, Oh Boy", strikes me as dull-- it's just too damn conventional on an album that's trying to be all things to anyone who'll listen.
Also, "Oh No, Oh Boy" features Seydel, and he just can't keep up. Granted, he shows subtlety and precision underneath his emoting. But plenty of whiny indie rock guys can do what he does; we need more Thompson-Hannants. On "Rory's Bleeding"-- their most clever-for-the-sake-of-cleverness song-- Seydel 's lying injured, and Thompson-Hannant coos that he was "caught in the crossfire, an innocent young man." I'd like to think she's calling him out as an "innocent" to remind us that she could use the guy's head to open beer bottles.
But honestly, Thompson-Hannant's as responsible as anyone for the record's swings into allegedly charming immaturity-- like on "Wilderness", where the band acts like fairy children flitting through the woods, fighting over who gets to be "tribal leader." It's whimsical and it works on its own terms, but that whimsy definitely undercuts the psychodrama and self-damnation that follow it. Sure, on "Goldenhead" and "Topsy Turvey" Thompson-Hannant sounds desparate and overwhelmed, but hey-- maybe it's just a phase.
This debut record takes a lot of chances, and to some degree, what works depends on who's listening. Shapes and Sizes are already making the rounds of the mp3 blogs, and that makes sense: Everybody can post the side of the band they like best. But next time, they should firm it up and rein it in. Their "try anything once" attitude is often very cute. But how much more "cute" do we need?
