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Expect An Event: Shapes And Sizes Makes Their First Trip To Athens

by Whitney Snell
03/08/2007



Shapes and Sizes (MySpace) is coming to town, but don't expect these Canadians to be squares.

The experimental pop band embarked last Friday on a jam-packed month long tour. "I don't really like having a lot of days off, because the whole point of a tour is to play shows," guitarist and singer Rory Seydel told me over the phone. "But the long drives can get annoying."

Their tour will bring them from their hometown of Vancouver to the Caledonia Lounge on Saturday, March 10. None of them have been to Athens before. "When we saw Athens on the list we all said, 'Ooh, Athens!'" Rory exclaimed. "We've all heard a lot of good things about Athens."

Shapes and Sizes started as a basement project among friends. Bassist Nathan Gage and drummer Jon Crellin were roommates. Keyboardist Caila Thompson-Hannant and Rory were high school friends. "Nathan and Caila were intimate, and they decided a band was necessary to fulfill their dreams," Rory said. They then recruited their two friends, and soon the four were making computer demos and playing house shows together.

They eventually sent a demo to Asthmatic Kitty, where Sufjan Stevens and his stepfather Lowell Brams immediately fell in love with them. A dinner and a breakfast of negotiations later, Shapes and Sizes officially had a label.

Rory said they're the first band on Asthmatic Kitty that wasn't already friends with everyone else. "We're kinda the outsiders," he joked. "But we've gotten to know pretty much everyone on the label."

Their next album,Split Lips, Winning Hips, a Shiner, will be released in May. "All the tracking was done in Vancouver in this dank space with crazy people all around," Rory said. When asked how this album differs from their last, he said, "We went nonstop, long days. We put a lot of effort into it and started using sound as an art itself."

All four members write music, but Rory said that so far Jon has been too embarrassed to share his songs. Each member's unique style brings a different element to their songs, and this diversity has led to descriptions such as, "an infectious elixir of pop mayhem."

"It's a messy dichotomy of rich and poor," Caila said of the new album. "It's more ballsy."

"We actually collaborated on the writing for this album which differed from the first," Rory added.

When asked what fans should expect from the show, band members shouted into the phone from the background:

"Nothing from the old album!"
"Lots of laughs!"
"A little physical comedy! A little slapstick!"

And Rory added simply, "An event."

Shapes and Sizes is touring with Castanets, and a limited edition tour EP featuring both bands will be available at the show.