Five bangers

We Make Shapes releases debut EP

I recently met with Damion Shade at the Yeti on Writer’s Night. Throughout our conversation, open mic hopefuls approached Shade to sign up for the stage. “Sheet’s over there, man,” Shade would say with a warm smile and quick handshake. The Writer’s Night is Shade’s baby, and has offered a voice to unheard songwriters and poets for the last few years. In addition to corralling the comedians and mesmerists that perform each week, Shade uses the night to perform his own songs.

Shade writes his songs under the moniker The Savage Young, an act which sometimes manifests as a full band. Other times The Savage Young is just the dreadlocked and gentle giant of Shade, pouring his heart out through an acoustic guitar. Recently The Savage Young found himself walking between the downward dogs at the Yoga Room’s live music event, which Shade described as “weirdly intimate,” through a laugh. Lately though, Shade’s focus has been on We Make Shapes, a collaborative project with musician Nathan Wright (Count Tutu, Branjae and the Filthy Animals).

“Metropolis (1927),” the opening track of We Make Shapes debut EP Penta, is an exercise in stadium rock maximalism filtered through minimal trip-hop instrumentation. The song’s blown-out snare hits and Van Halen guitar licks ride atop a hypnotic 808 vamp. Shade’s voice is absent. In fact, his voice seldom appears on the EP; and when it does, it may sound less than human. 

“In certain ways, I was just like, ‘fuck singing,’” Shade said about his vocal approach in We Make Shape’s beginning. “There was a point where I thought we’d be an instrumental band, and that Nathan’s guitar would be the voice.” Shade lost his mother in 2013 while fronting his former band Ithaca, and attributed the resulting period of depression to his step away from the mic. On Penta, he’s singing again, but with a more calculated approach to the lyrics, and often through vocal effects. 

On “folds,” one of the three tracks on Penta to feature vocals, Shade repeats: “You are the only force that cuts each length of time into a hairbreadth/That folds the universe into a bright and utter grin that I try to find.” It’s a mantra, and the only lyric in the song. It’s also an act of restraint from a man that once wrote songs with single lines that read: “Quentin Tarantino films were washing over Julie’s glasses, reminding her that she is growing cold. All the other film school dropouts made remarks about detachment, and how our culture is slowly growing old.” Shade recited these lyrics to me at Yeti, and chuckled. “Like...I sang that shit.”

Apart from the new lyrical approach, Shade and Wright have narrowed their musical focus after a recent tour with Johnny Polygon. After following Polygon night after night and putting most of the crowd into what they called a “Buddhist trance” with their more experimental music, Shade had an epiphany. “I had this old football player moment, where I thought, what would my coach say?” 

The duo decided to play every song, “more committed, more focused, more into it, and sing every note with all the strength and power and control [we could] possibly muster.” They also dropped their more spacey compositions (the group has 57 total songs) in favor of their bangers, of which they’ve assembled the five hardest hitting for Penta. 

On Friday, Feb. 19, Tulsans can get a taste of Penta at the Yeti, where We Make Shapes will host a concert celebrating the album’s release. The free show starts at 10 p.m. and you can pick up a copy of the album for $5. 

For more from Mitch, read his article on ending violence against women through dance with One Billion Rising.