Photo: Press
There's something about Micachu's music that makes it, in theory, perfectly suited to the disused multi-storey car park in which she is performing tonight. It's glitchy, industrial DIY pop, full of distortion and found-object samples. Under instruments on her Wikipedia page, it says "Vocals, guitar, electronics, vacuum cleaner."
We arrive at Bold Tendencies, a summertime non-profit art organisation which has transformed a Peckham car park into a hub of art installations, rooftop bars and gig venues whose walls are - inexplicably - made of hay, just as the sun is melting into a beautiful London skyline. So beautiful is the view from the roof, in fact, that it seems a shame that the show itself is nestled in an unbearably hot barn-cum-parking space several storeys down.
It's also a shame, given how many fans desperately posted online asking for spare tickets to the sold-out event, that the room is barely one third full. It's the band's first appearance in London in three years, and they come armed with new material in the form of a new album, Good Sad Happy Bad. But the lack of a crowd creates a stifled atmosphere that's something of a comedown given the hype that built up in the show's preceding weeks.
Listen to Micachu & The Shapes 'Oh Baby' below
Still, Micachu - real name Mica Levi - manages to exude a presence and a force that gradually trickles its way into the crowd. The break she took from her work with The Shapes, in order to compose the soundtrack to the brilliantly sinister Under The Skin, has done nothing to stifle her live performance.
The new music, too, is infectious - itching with discordant beats and rich, soulful melodies; a little less urgent and hyper-active than what's come before it, but still staying inherently true to the style that earned Micachu such a cult following. Unfortunately, presumably in an effort to recreate the echoed, muffled vocal effect of the new material's studio recording, Levi's microphone renders her vocals, at times, impossible to make out.
It's an energetic, frenetic and intensely likeable comeback show though, and will surely have left fans who'd scrambled to get tickets with few complaints. Aside, perhaps, from the fact that it comes to an end far too soon.
