Over at Open Your Eyes, a music blog, Peter posted the following (try saying that three times fast):

The Taste In My Mouth – Shapes and Sizes
I don’t know what it is about this song, but it has completely taken over me. It doesn’t even feel like a song, more like a painful memory, haunting away at me. At the three minute mark….those vocals…..simply surreal. I wouldn’t try hard to like it though. Hide it within a playlist and let it eat away at you as it has done to me. If that’s you sort of thing.

Turns out that it wasn’t my sort of thing. Instead I just listened to it then and there. And I was not super impressed at first. But about halfway, before the “simply surreal” vocals, I found myself totally engrossed. And I think I’ve heard the tune maybe 20 times now, just today. It’s beautiful.

The starkness of the production is so barren sounding that when it fills up, it’s…well not really refreshing because the sounds are still sort of chilling. How often to you hear banjo and low brass together? I know, I know, the brass is so “today” what with Bjork filling up Volta with a brass section. And the kora on Volta is really not all that far removed from this banjo, really.

But I digress. The “surreal” vocal section is really quite stunning. But again, it’s the production that knocks me out. The electronica gimmickry going on behind those vocals and throughout are sparse enough to force me to listen closely, but still present enough to be heard.

The clear winner here is the architecture and the ending. The thing builds to a free section. Yes, I said free. Really. Starts out beautiful, quiet, stark, chilling and ends with a free section.

Really.

And the cats can really play the free stuff, too, especially the drummer. Reminds me of Sonny Murray.

If I had to give it a description, you know “like listening to Dali and George Bush have conversation over coffee about nanotechnology” or some nonsense like that, here’s what I would say: Shapes and Sizes occupies a world in which Bjork’s horn section mingle with the end of Wilco’s Poor Places (senza “Yankee…Hotel…Foxtrot…”), under the umbrella of very Decemberists-Crane’s-Wife artwork, and starring a lovely soprano voice singing – initially, at least – about the blood spewing from her cut finger.

Thanks Peter from Open Your Eyes for putting up such a beautiful piece of music. And to Shapes and Sizes in lovely Montreal, way to go.

As of now (July 23, 2007), Shapes and Sizes has 4,065 friends on MySpace.
Artist website: http://www.shapesandsizes.ca/
Artist MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/shapesandsizes

Rick