The Popular Shapes: These guys are starting to grow on me and I think the lower dosage of only two songs serves as a bit of an inoculation to their full-length. You know how the Tasmanian Devil, when he’s moving really quickly, his body is just swirls with the occasional limb poking out? That’s what the Popular Shapes sound like to me. They seem to spin songs so quickly and in such a tight circle that it’s sometimes hard to hear what’s really going on. I can easily imagine them great live – if they’re the whirlwind counterpart to these two cuts – sharing the stage with The Tyrades. The Intelligence: Very Dieter-rock and Teutonic-sounding. Fronted by an android-voiced dude and framed by iceberg-y and cold knife guitars, metronomic drumming, and jutting angularity, it’s a wee bit too arty and a wee not as rocking for my tastes. “Cold Calling” reminds me of the song on the Repo Man soundtrack, the one that kept on repeating “Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole,” just not as catchy
–todd (Dirtnap)