I grabbed this album knowing nothing about the band or their sound. My decision was based solely on the fact that they had their session musicians credited under “hired guns” in the booklet. In these “hired guns” were horn players and a lap steel guitarist, so I assumed that I was in for some sort of audio party. In a way I was right, but it wasn’t the party I expected. It was as if I’d ventured out to support a friend’s band and ended up enjoying the support band more than my aforesaid friend’s ensemble.

Shapes and Sizes are the kind of band that you accidentally come across (which seems to be a common theme with Asthmatic Kitty’s performers, as it’s also how I found out about founder Sufjan Stevens). The most concrete way I can explain this – I’m trying to avoid tangents today – is to say they conjure up a feeling I’ve had many times before. You see a band for the first time and by the end of the gig, which is generally at someone-you-barely-know’s house party, you have a crush on one of the members regardless of their sex or attractiveness – Shapes and Sizes are exactly like that.

The album itself is chaotic; yet it is terribly efficient at the same time. The songs are generally between three-and-a-half to five minutes in length, but, in numerous cases, these songs are fragmented into two distinct sections. Possibly the most interesting aspect of this concept is the fact that the breaks between these songs inside songs are more definite than the breaks between tracks. If you were to attempt to track this album (for instance you were making a mix tape – not a CD because my car only has a tape deck) then you would stop at, what the band has determined to be, the wrong places.

The first track, ‘Island’s Gone Bad’, begins softly with Rory Seydel singing wistfully about nine years on an island. The one thing you realise immediately is that Shapes and Sizes craft beautifully simple, poignant songs; another is Rory’s pronunciation. Rory pronounces one word particularly captivatingly on this song – I was once obsessed with the fact that Primus’ Les Claypool enunciated rhinoceros as if it was “rine – o – saurus” – that being the large space in which the word “little” is to be sung. The word itself is pronounced very quickly and this space simply remains. This is precisely what I enjoy the most about Shapes and Sizes, this album has so much space. The parts are beautiful but simple and layered perfectly on and around each other.

This layering and song construction is similar to Sufjan Stevens’ but the music of Shapes and Sizes is very different. This comes from many things; the aforementioned ‘Island’s Gone Bad’ begins softly with Rory’s vocals until the first half of the song is over. It is here that we are introduced to second vocalist Caila Thompson as well as Shapes and Sizes ability to construct riff-driven indie rock. As Caila sings about fruit tasting sweet, Rory and Nathan, the third principle songwriter and sometime lead vocalist, scream about kids going bad and mad. At this point the song has taken an absurd turn from where it originally began; all three vocalists have joined in and now one of the “hired guns” steps in playing a saxophone solo reminiscent of The Cure’s ‘Close to Me’. This opening song provides a mere taste of what you can expect from this band: two-for-the-price-of-one songs, numerous vocalists, simple and exquisite song construction, misery, and company.

These quaint Canadians have delivered an album that is extremely diverse and, despite three vocalists and an ever-changing style, the band’s signature sound is a constant. It is as if by fluke everything works for Shapes and Sizes. The idea of the cover art is an enigma in itself; it really should be a pretentious wank (it is a winged eye shooting some sort of light beam on to a whale) but, almost infuriatingly, it is positively charming. As well as this, the album refuses to become tiresome after countless listens. It is genuinely hindering me writing any of the other reviews I was supposed to have done a week ago. With smooth endearing songs, off-set with clanky indie sub-songs (sometimes vice versa), you kind of want to push Rory and his gang down a set of stairs. But then they’d probably look back up at you and say “it’s okay dude, can I get you a drink while I’m down here? It’s no problem really”.