Ticking Haze, the debut album from Shapes Like People, is reviewed and Kat and Carl Mann answer the Pure Pop Phive

By Henry Lipput

Ticking Haze (Jangleshop Records), the debut album from Shapes Like People, is rich with melodies, full of yearnings for love and a better life, and the offerings of a hand of support to lovers and friends.

It’s appropriate that Ticking Haze begins with the song “Ambition Is Your Friend” with the lines “Don’t punish me for trying/Ambition is your friend” because Carl Mann, one half of the husband-and-wife duo that makes up Shapes Like People, is one of the most ambitious people I know of in the indie music industry. He began work on Ticking Haze after two years of work on last year’s Daysdream, a two LP, 16 song collection (and one of the best albums of 2024) from his other band The Shop Window (he sang lead vocals and played lead guitar, keyboard, and percussion and he also produced the whole thing).

Carl began writing song to pitch to other singers and asked his wife Kat, who works in the film industry, to provide female vocals so he could hear what it sounded like (Kat is no stranger to singing as she provided backing vocals to three of Carl’s songs on Daysdream). He decided to keep her vocals and went to work writing more songs for what would eventually become Ticking Haze.

With jangle-meister Carl at the helm and Kat’s double-tracked vocals on songs like the new pop classic “When The Radio Plays” Shapes Like People have a tendency to sound like Kirsty Maccoll covering a Smiths song.

Although “When The Radio Plays” and “A New Crown” are not set along side each other on the album’s track listing they are two sides of the same look at life in a city. In “When The Radio Plays” a woman watches the missed buses go by in the same way she has missed opportunities to find love. In the gentle “A New Crown” this woman has also dealt with buses but in a different way: “I’ve done time in the city smoke/Had to leave before I choked” and decides to leave for a life in the country with its “shade from an old chestnut tree’ and “blissful scenes with natural stone.”

Other highlights on Ticking Haze include the beautiful, hopeful “Weathering” with lyrics that work as life lessons and conjure up “weathering the storm” and “taking the breaks off.” And on the upbeat, alt-Country tune “The Ship Has Sailed” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Kat and Carl were wearing Stetsons during the recording.

Kat and Carl answer the Pure Pop Phive

How would you describe your music?

Carl: It has elements of all the music we love - Janglepop, Dreampop, Shoegaze, Indiepop, and some have described it as having Folky vibes here and there. 

Kat: When we make music we’re not really thinking about genre, we’re just trying to create something we love the sound of. 

What/who are your major influences?

Carl: When we first started recording demos we’d sit and listen to all the albums and artists we both loved. We mainly focused on female-fronted acts to think about where we might want to take it.  

Kat: Here are some that we both love and may have inspired us - Alvvays, Sol Seppy, Agnes Obel, Weyes Blood, Lee & Nancy, Johnny & June, Isobel & Mark, Eurythmics, Carpenters, Jenny Lewis, Mazzy Star, The Sundays, Cocteau Twins. 

Do you perform live? Do you have any upcoming gigs?

Kat: At the moment we don’t have any plans to play live, but we’ll never say never.

Carl: Life doesn't provide us with much space for gigging, but it would be a joy to perform these songs. If we ever get around to it hopefully The Shop Window gents would step up and provide us with the band. 

How do you support yourself so you can continue to make music?

Kat: I work full time in the film industry, while Carl is focused on music and running the label. 

Carl: We’re about to start offering production, mixing, mastering, writing/collaborations and session guitar services through Jangleshop Records, so we’re in a little period of development before opening the books up. 

What’s your favorite album of all time (that's not one of yours)?

Carl: There are so many, but if we had to pick one album that is really special to both of us it would be It’s a Wonderful Life by Sparklehorse. 

Kat: Carl introduced me to this record when we first met, and all these years later we still listen to it. We instantly get transported back to that time. Plus, it’s just an incredibly beautiful album.