For more than a decade, Mica Levi has been making a warped, experimental version of pop music, usually with their band Micachu and the Shapes. In 2014, though, Levi leapt into the world of film scores, creating the tingly and unsettling music for Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. Since then, Levi has been nominated for an Oscar. Soon, we’ll hear Levi’s scores for the Twitter-thread adaptation Zola and the forthcoming Glazer movie Strasbourg 1518. But Levi is still making music outside of that world.
…Levi has just surprise-released a new LP called Ruff Dog. The new LP arrives just two months after the most recent effort from the band that used to be called Micachu and the Shapes. Recently, that group announced that it had changed its name to Good Sad Happy Bad, taking…
…the name of the Michachu and The Shapes album that came out in 2015. For Good Sad Happy Bad, Levi remained a member of the band, but they were no longer the leader. Instead, Levi switched over to electronics, and their bandmate Raisa Khan took over lead vocals. Two months ago, the newly reconstituted band released the album Shades.
On first listen, Levi’s new album Ruff Dog doesn’t sound much like Good Sad Happy Bad’s Shades. Instead, Ruff Dog falls somewhere between Levi’s film-score work and the giddy, oblique post-punk of Micachu And The Shapes. The songs are essentially pop songs, but Levi has buried them in warped, ominous effects without dimming their sunny melodies. It’s probably also worth noting that Levi has included a 69-second track with the title “A plain clothed Jimi Hendrix drives me to Newcastle. For some reason the trip will take 3 days and he is going to do it for £150. He drives really smoothly and only listens to one album which is by someone with Joy in their name.”