Impossible . . . At First

The Impossible Shapes, Dogme 95
Subterranean, Chicago
Monday, March 6, 2006

I admit I wasn’t immediately sold on The Impossible Shapes‘ TUM. The record, which will be released on CD the day after the band’s Chicago gig and was released last year on vinyl through St. Ives, felt uneven upon the first few listens. While 17 songs seems like a lot, the truth is only two of those break the three-minute mark; half of the songs don’t even see two minutes. I found instrumental fragments such as the 48-second “Wild West Wake Us Up,” the 14-second “Kephra,” and the one-minute “Hathor” to be distracting, giving TUM an awkward, disjointed feel.

I still feel that way.

But once I started ignoring those moments, there were plenty that deserved undivided attention. On this, the Indiana-based group’s sixth full-length since 2000 (and third on Secretly Canadian), The Impossible Shapes dazzle with dark psych-rock (“Twisted Sol Epoch” and “Hornbeam”), lo-fi pop (“Pan-Ther”), and brilliant hooks (“Florida Silver Springs”). “Pixie Pride” and “Willow, Willow Yew,” though a bit goofy in a dancing-in-a-field-of-sunflowers kind of way, are wildly addictive and are two of the best examples of the Shapes’ knack of making the most from simple melodies. The excess (about three minutes total) is annoying but can easily be overlooked thanks to the rest of the material. Sold.

What do you think Nick Wright, aka Dogme 95, was doing when the idea popped into his head that his next record should be “a fictional tale of a songwriter on the boat with Charles Darwin during his studies on evolution, origin of the species, and survival of the fittest”? Dogme 95 will celebrate the release of said album, The Reagle Beagle, by opening for The Impossible Shapes. Wright must know what he’s doing, our own Patrick Conlan called his last release, Arcadian Hymns, a “minor masterwork.”

#Smallwire# also plays.

— Trevor Fisher

Click here to download The Impossible Shapes’ “Florida Silver Springs.”

Click here to download Dogme 95’s “Ocean Floor.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly