The Impossible Shapes – “Late Summer Sky”
The Impossible Shapes – “Fulgent Fields” MP3/download
It’s so easy to misstep when attempting to create a bold new piece of art. That’s what I felt The Impossible Shapes did when they released Horus. It wasn’t bad but it just didn’t feel like a full-fledged Shapes BLAST, and singer Chris Barth (solo alias: Normanoak) admitted as much to me when I interviewed him about the album (I’ll repost that interview someday), saying it was a “selfish” album for him as a songwriter. I’m still not completely sure what he meant by that, and yet he was right about something being OFF.
With Tum, a handmade LP created right after Horus in a much less formal, garage-style setting, came out on St. Ives Records and blew me away immediately. It was as if the Shapes had forgotten the pressure to deliver a Hit record and started immersing themselves in the music again, and the mood suited them almost impossibly well.
Although it was eventually repressed on CD by Secretly Canadian, the original run of Tum was but 320 copies (I got number 56) and I’m assuming it went fairly quickly into the indie-rock night.
I present Tum before you now because it’s — along with most of Impossible Shapes’ other material — one of the records I turn to again and again to salve my somewhat worn-down soul. It represents the best brand of Americana, with all its most beautiful contradictions: Sweet/bitter, joyous/sorrowful, slow/fast … and best of all, unlike a lot of the music I’ve ingested and enjoyed over the years, it gets better every time I hear it.
A lot of the content rings of another great Shapes creation, We Like it Wild, but Tum is more extreme, seemingly more spur-0f-the-moment and definitely more assured and confident, comfortable in its own skin like those wonderful Basement Tapes care of Bob Dylan and The Band and just as jug-band-y. HOP ON THE WAGON, I say! Hitch up them bitchin’ banjos and RIDE all the way to Nantizuckett.
Of particular interest to you (if you like what’s good; you … like what’s good, don’t you?) will be “Pixie Pride,” the above-linked “Late Summer Sky” and the quite, folksy, tapped-into-the-vein-of-emotion title track. It goes deep, brother.
“YOOOOODEEEELAAAAAAY-HEEEE-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”
[Check out this live performance of "Pixie Pride"; you'll luv it.]
