Good Sad Happy Bad

The band formerly known as Micachu & The Shapes open the Shades

Some records seem like they don’t want to be found at all. Five years after the album Good Sad Happy Bad by Micachu & The Shapes, the band has returned under the name Good Sad Happy Bad for their new record Shades. Discogs be damned. I have to applaud Mica Levi and company for their sneering disdain for search engine optimization. The album quietly dropped last month on a small French label called Textile Records with not much fanfare and very little promotion.

Fortunately for you, I’ve kept my eyes peeled for anything Micachu-related since the band’s marvellous 2009 debut Jewellery. At once jarring and irresistibly tuneful, Jewellery was a ramshackle burst of experimental pop co-produced by Matthew Herbert. One song sampled a vacuum cleaner. It was as if the Young British Artists had been transposed to the world of music. Seeing the band during the tour for that release in Montréal at Il Motore was a revelation, one of the last truly punk-feeling performances I can remember seeing. The stage brimmed with offbeat chaos.

Songwriter and producer Mica Levi zoomed into the stratosphere soon after, writing film scores for Under the Skin and Jackie, which was nominated for Best Original Score at the Oscars and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music in 2016. Levi followed that up by producing my favourite album of 2018, Tirzah’s hypnotic Devotion. Whether it’s soundtracking movies, producing for others or composing her own pop songs, there’s something inscrutable and wild about anything Levi puts her hands on.

After levelling up to the high-minded world of scoring, Shades is a surprising detour to conventional rock music for Levi. More has changed for the band than just their name.