It had been a long day of dealing with the usual 15-things-that-can-go-wrong in an average day when I hit the play button for the very first song on “Shape & Form”. By that time, I was tired, even my pockets ached and my eyelids wanted to avalanche down past my face, but here’s this mysterious new album and the first thing out of the Vocalist’s mouth is “I feel myself go Insane” -no kiddin’ pal, that makes two of us!. Then I just sink deep into the song, and I keep going and going, and the distorted guitars that break in guns blazing only exacerbate the condition, and I’m all the richer for it.

For the first time that day I felt vindicated, I was on the same wavelength as this guy whose music I’ve never heard before In my life, but I’m glad this is the song and this is the day we’re introduced, because I’ll feel that much strongly about it by the end. When the drum fills at the climax of the song hit me, and the guitar goes wailing like it’s going out of fashion, I know I want nothing more than to go along with all of this for the rest of the wonderful album.

“Gravity’”s neo-bluesy hits come early and I find myself asking if I’m vibing more to the vocals or the guitar; answer probably lies right in the middle, as it’s clear that Two Feet doesn’t treat music like replaceable drapes to be hung around his voice to make it not-acapella.

“Play The Part” comes along and it makes a statement or a case for me not to grow too comfortable with what I’ve heard so far, because this album’s got lots of cool new sounds it wants to explore and I should just expect the unexpected. Right as this sinks in the track ends and “Ella” comes along, solidifying the notion of increasingly more complex curve balls with its almost runway-ready house sound. “Until I come Home” yet again defies following in the footsteps of its predecessor and it instead opts for a vanguardist R&B sound with a guitar riff that’s just too cool for school.

I suppose that Two Feet couldn’t help himself when it was time to follow the previous song up. R&B’s silky smooth seductiveness is just a sticky trap that nobody can resist. The album walks back on itself a bit with “Fire In my Head” to dwell on that honeyed vibe; and it’s a great thing because this song actually has an easy time to lift your spirit up, or at least it did for me, and when I heard “I see you” in all its shoe-gazey glory I jumped easily on board with its optimistic and almost idealistic vibe. This ladies and gentle -so far- is how you piece an album together. Song order is really important, believe it or not.

One once again the album turns on its head. It played the R&B card twice in a row and I was expecting it to go back to that very sleek bluesy-rock of the first few songs, but no. “Devil” is a very unexpected EDM-heavy song with a nice funky slant to it that is perhaps melodically closer to “Ella” than anything else so far, but it does feel much more edgy and intense. I think it’s also noteworthy in that I think it showcases Two Feet’s vocals the best, I feel that the mix between spacious and ambiguous background synths/samples and the strong groovy rhythmics really play to his strengths. My only complaint about this track is that the -amazing- solo with which it ends is… too damn short! C’mon man that was glorious, I felt like I got cut out of something truly great there.

It’s funny that a song called “Don’t bring me Down” does exactly that. But don’t misunderstand me, i’m not saying that the song is literally depressing or that it kills the mood or whatever, no it was very clear from the very first two or three songs that this album was going to be hitting more than just one emotional note; now some of them are high, and some of them are low or somewhere in between, and I’d say that this song certainly feels near the latter category with its echoey-reverb heavy sound; but wait a minute, because right in the middle comes this really intense -if brief- guitar solo that feels almost like an entirely different song. The solo comes back again for the ending, it’s more of a repeated leitmotif and the solo itself doesn’t come actually from the guitar but from the synth. This song definitely holds a lot of Prog Rock in its DNA.

So far, Two Feet has been playing quite a bit with vocal modulation and other effects, but “Amy” runs much further with it, especially near the end. This is a much more intimate song and I think that it certainly works in its favor. Contrast all of this with the following track, “My life” in which his vocals take the back seat to let the electronic groove and all the other elements do the talking.

“Caviar” Seems to be like it takes on a lot of inspiration from Trap music, but it does so with a strong melodic component that’s very removed from the monotony and simplicity that seems to befall a lot of the more common and underwhelming examples of the genre; if anything the flow of the vocals blend into what we previously heard of Two Feet’s R&B capabilities resulting in

Something that I can only describe as a Sleek, futuristic version of Underground Kings. Pay extra attention to the final minutes of the track to get an earful of how layered and rich Two Feet’s sound is.

That song called “Limo” would follow one called “Caviar” is no surprise, but because this is Two Feet we’re talking about, he had to pull a surprise on us with a clearly EDM song packed with soulful vocals and those 80s guitar licks we’ve grown to love so much. “Limo” is probably the catchiest track in the entire album, and one of the best too.

“ADHD” Cycles back to some of the bluesy rock sound of before but it expands upon it with a lot more power and intensity in what is a surprisingly heavy -but well earned- track. It is followed by “Shoe”, which I suppose it brings the intensity back down a bit into shoegaze territory, though it also has this 80s-synth rock vibe to it that I dig quite a lot, so much so that I actually didn’t go through with the remaining songs just yet, I just had to hear it a second time before moving on.

The two final tracks are “Need It” and “Channel”, and they both feel like a condensed version of a lot of what the album had been so far, in fact, upon closer inspection I did feel like from “ADHD” onward the album seemed to wrap itself up with one last send-off to every major aspect of itself. This makes a lot of sense when you know that Two Feet himself called the project “an eclectic mess”, so I feel that, perhaps subconsciously, he decided to make four-part bookends for each cycle of influences and genres expressed by the rest of the album. I will have to disagree on one thing with him though: Eclectic? Sure as hell is. Messy? Nah, not at all, friend.

All of the artwork across the project, from each single cover to the album artwork, was inspired by American abstract painter Mark Rothko. I can’t say he’s one of my favorites, but I think I get what the intention was here. Rothko’s work deconstructed Shape & Form -as well as color- and It’s easy to see how it ties together with the things Two feet has done here with different genres and textures.

Of the album, the man himself says that “Shape & Form is the album I am most proud of to date. To me, it feels like my most complete body of work,” and while I can’t say that I’ve had the time to pour over his previous records (something I certainly intend to do) I can easily believe him when he says that, because all of the songs -as eclectic as they are- feel like they were carefully and adeptly stitched together with common purpose, all cut from the same cloth even at their most disparate and distinct. This album is lengthy but not a second of it feels like padding or like it drags on.

All in all, I can certainly laud Two Feet for this extraordinary piece of work, and I can also say that I’ve been gifted a phenomenal new artist to follow.

Figuring out "Shape & Form" - New album by Two Feet

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