Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion - Rectangles and Circumstance (2024)

Where, exactly, does Caroline Shaw fit in the scheme of things? Does the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and musician fit at all, or is she the proverbial square peg forever languishing outside? An archetypal Nonesuch recording artist, on Rectangles and Circumstance Shaw doesn't so much straddle genre as vault over it, mixing high-concept, academy-trained ideas with serious percussion—eardrum-caressing bells, thumps, clangs, chords, melodies and sonic curios. "This" opens with a man's voice reciting the title word in time, driving the rhythm like a kickdrum while wisps of Shaw's breath suggest hi-hats.

As a singer, hers is a singular approach, a wordsmith with her own style of precisely enunciated talk-sing phrasing who is more than willing to sacrifice meter for meaning. Backed, as on her 2021 album Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part, by New York rhythm unit Sō Percussion, these ten new songs follow a similar pattern while remaining distinctive: angular, semi-inscrutable pieces, all less than six minutes, that blossom when given proper attention.

The clacking "Slow Motion" harnesses clap-tones that hint at Steve Reich's seminal "Clapping Music" to advance a song with so many curious musical detours and perspectives that it seems one well-placed meme away from virality. As with other songs here, Shaw revels in lyrical gymnastics and meta-commentary, creating phrases and then remarking on them, wondering on nouns and adjectives as they arrive. She connects "line" and "fine" and "internal rhyme" in a song filled with them. "The Parting Glass" harnesses what sounds like a glass organ to provide the ambiance as she offers an eloquent, loving toast to a night well spent. "Who Turns Outon the Light," a subdued meditation with glockenspiel-esque spatters of harmony, shimmers as it soothes.

At six minutes, album closer "To Music" is an exquisitely ornate benediction, one that resonates as if recorded in a sanctuary. It floats along untethered while layers of Shaw's voice cascade. As the coda fades, those who have devoted ample attention to Rectangles and Circumstance will exit as if stepping into afternoon daylight after a breathtaking matinee.

TRACKLIST

1. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - Rectangles and Circumstance
2. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - Sing On
3. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - Silently Invisibly
4. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - And So
5. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - The Parting Glass
6. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion;Ringdown - Slow Motion (feat. Ringdown)
7. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - Who Turns Out The Light
8. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - Like A Drum
9. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - This
10. Caroline Shaw;So Percussion - To Music