Crinkles – Random Shapes (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

You don’t go to a local gig expecting to leave with an album that sounds like both a long-lost jazz-funk-prog record and the sound of the future…well, one possible future at least. But that is what happened a few months ago. I have to admit that I was there to see the main act, The Early Swerve, who sounded equally as hard to categorise as Random Shapes, but for very different reasons.

Not only were both bands impressive, but the headliners encoring with a fiddle-driven, skiffely-folk cover of ‘Sultans of Swing’ perhaps summed up just what sort of night it was. Eclectic doesn’t even start to cover it, which is perhaps how gigs should be. A couple of months later, and here I am giving Crinkles, the 7-track album from Random Shapes, another spin and wondering how you put such elegant and eloquent music into words. Okay, I’ll have a go…

‘Asinine’ opens with a masterclass in deftness and delicacy, musical lines laid out like pencil marks across the page, with sounds completing this watercolour of a track as much through the space left untouched as via the application of sonic hues. ‘Alright’ follows, an immediate change of direction, funky and fantastic, blending grace and groove into an energetic and infectious salvo.

‘Blindsided/Not a Whole Lot’ is ambient and creatively empty, cinematic and shot through with just enough wandering basslines and chiming sonic shards, restrained vocals and the sort of beats that go unnoticed, unnoticed because they become part of the fabric of the song rather than just something to tether the song to.

‘Something to Give’ feels more traditionally indie, but spend a bit of time with it, and you realise it is far too smartly done to be given such an overused and underwhelming tag. This is the sound of three musicians who understand that songs aren’t platforms for showboating their, what you realise by now, considerable talents, but that it is they who serve the song itself, and Random Shapes often prefer to do that in subtle, seductive ways.

‘Space Jam’ is psychedelic and trippy, slightly arabesque and coloured with scintillating salvos of guitar; the title track blends proggy, or perhaps post-rock, ideas with pop-aware contagion, and the album ends with ‘Faultline’ rising from the balladic and beautiful through funk-infused groove-fests before tumbling headlong into a crescendo of searing soundscaping.

Usually, when I review an album, I try to focus on three or four songs that both establish a band’s sound and hopefully express their creative diversity. The fact that I felt the need to talk about each song, not to mention that I could have written another thousand words and still not truly talked about everything going on here, speaks volumes.

And to think that I got here from simply watching the opening act in a small pub gig on a Thursday night in Swindon! So we have learned two things. Firstly, always make time to watch the opening acts. Secondly, the most amazing music can be found in the most unexpected places. Actually, three things…get this album as soon as is humanly possible.

Crinkles