Micachu & The Shapes have announced Good Sad Happy Bad, their forthcoming full-length, out September 11th via Rough Trade Records. The band has also shared the first single “Oh Baby,” which is now available for streaming. Micachu & The Shapes will play East Coast shows in September, including a stop at Pop Montreal, marking their first time here in three years. Tickets will go on sale this Friday A full tour will follow later this fall.

Three years after the release of their last record, Micachu & The Shapes’ return is almost an accident: the trio of friends decided to rehearse in an East London studio and found themselves immersed into an hours-long jam. Drummer Marc Pell had an Edirol field recorder in hand, and unbeknownst to his bandmates, recorded the whole session; Bell, Mica Levi, and Raisa Khan were so enamored of those off-the-cuff audio experiments that they became THE beginnings of a new record.

“For me it’s the most free we have been,” Levi explains. Rather than showing up to the studio with songs written out, the trio started with a collaborative improvisation, from which Levi chose sections to develop into songs, writing lyrics to the entire record “non-stop, in one avalanche.”

The band worked out the final mixes together over a number of months – rather than in a traditional, multi-track studio over a shorter period – Pell found a new degree of creativity. “I think the best drum part I have ever written is the stick-clicking at the beginning of ‘Peach’ – a moment, he explains, that he wouldn’t have been able to notice without the luxury of seeing the recorded tracks as more than simply songs, but as collections of sonic ideas.

Micachu & The Shapes on tour:
9/12 – New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge – Tickets
9/13 – Philadelphia, PA – Boot & Saddle – Tickets
9/16 – Montreal, QC – Bar Le Ritz – Tickets

Micachu & The Shapes
Good Sad Happy Bad
Rough Trade Records

Tracklist:
1. Sad
2. Relaxing
3. Dreaming
4. Sea Air
5. Thinking It
6. Crushed
7. Oh Baby
8. Waiting
9. Unity
10. Peach
11. LA Poison
12. Hazes
13. Suffering