In the wild world of jangle pop, many bands have come forth to deliver their take on the timeless sound of the genre: Sparkling guitars, echoing drums, chilled vocals, and an overall vibe that suggests melancholy. A look through a jangle pop Spotify playlist will bring forth familiar names like R.E.M., Guster, and Big Star, but also more obscure groups with monikers such as The Green Pajamas, Close Lobsters, and perhaps one of my favorites, Kitchens of Distinction.
Add to this canon of jangle pop masters Shapes Like People, the Maidstone, Kent-based husband-and-wife duo of Carl and Kat Mann, with their debut album Ticking Haze. Carl has enjoyed a decades-long music career, mostly working as a writer, composer, and producer for acts including Kylie Minogue. He also has a dream pop group called The Shop Window, which in 2024 released their third album, Daysdream.
But Kat, originally from New Zealand, has never sung on a record before, despite her vocals being the crux of Ticking Haze. Yet Carl sought out a female voice for new songs that didn’t quite gel with his work with The Shop Window. With some persuasion, Kat agreed to lend her voice to the new project. After the Manns went through records of female vocalists, including Mazzy Star, Weyes Blood, and Jenny Lewis, they found the sound they were looking for, and inspiration flowed from there.
What results is a powerful and polished sound, with Kat’s vocals shimmering on top of Carl’s jangle pop arrangements. While the genre hasn’t seen much mainstream activity over the past few decades, Ticking Haze sounds more fitting in the 2020s than it does retro. Even a track like “When The Radio Plays” – which blends in a disco beat during the bridge – subverts sounding dated. What’s very special about Ticking Haze is that it comes from a bond, two people in love trusting each other with their talents to create a cohesive work.
The lyrics on Ticking Haze stem from simple poetry, with a line from “Don’t Hear Your Footsteps” evoking the band’s name: “Don’t hear the footsteps following me/Not a soul in sight as far as I see/All alone with shapes like people/Haunting the moonlight ahead.” Jangle pop bands’ vocalists often suffer from mumbling their lyrics – Michael Stipe, I’m looking at you – but Kat Mann’s voice is clear as a bell on this record. She sings every lyric with conviction and confidence on both the upbeat tracks (“Ambition Is Your Friend”) and the reflective (“World Keeps Spinning”). I especially enjoy the chorus of the latter track, which closes out the record: “World keeps spinning/Night keeps falling/Love shines bright in your eyes/Day keeps coming/Life keeps giving/Future’s ready to write”.
It’s a wonderfully authentic record with a sound that brings a sense of New Wave energy to a decade in need of authenticity. If bands like Shapes Like People can herald a coming of the jangle/dream pop revival in this decade, our ears will be all the better for it.
Ticking Haze was released on 7 March 2025. You can find it on Shapes Like People’s Bandcamp, along with a newly released cover of the Cliques’ 1969 song “Supergirl”. That track will appear on Shapes Like People’s upcoming second album, Under The Rainbow, due out next April.
Written by Will Sisskind
