Percussion instruments made out of liquor bottles. The droning refrain of a vacuum cleaner mid-suck. A prepared guitar that might have been smashed apart and then custom-remade with glue, elastic and scraps of felt. These sound like the DIY instruments that avant-garde improviser Harry Partch assembled, but hearing creator Micachu play them made me understand why she insists her songs are pop music. A lot of craft went into that cacophony.

Micachu (secret identity Mica Levi, a 22-year-old Londoner with musician parents and extensive classical training) made her Toronto debut with touring band The Shapes, who take a greater role onstage than they do on debut album Jewellery. They were up to the challenge: keyboardist Raisa Khan and drummer Marc Pell remained coordinated during the many, many instantaneous tempo changes, and Pell made an almighty clatter throughout. Micachu stood in the middle of it, manipulating her “Chu”. At one point during “Floor”, the altered acoustic guitar resembled a mandolin; at others, it sounded electric. The masterful array of noises was both impressive and perverse, like watching a world-class sound poet.

As the band ran through most of Jewellery I realized that their construction of sonic high-rises has a lot in common with pop stars such as The-Dream, who carefully layers numerous vocal tracks atop and across each other. The particulars are wildly different — Micachu, who has the mumbling, bloody-minded cadence of a teenage boy but rather more charm, doesn’t even really try to sing — but the formal principles are strikingly similar. She was even “paranoid,” paradoxically, about the noisy Chu’s precise tuning. The set’s chaos was only barely controlled, but that’s what kept its sounds interesting. When Khan tinkled those empties, I heard R&B from the future.

There was mutual nervousness among both band and audience — Levi was taken aback by the crowd’s loud appreciation, then taken aback even more when we were too shy to do anything except clap. The setlist had that slightly perfunctory quality most new artists can’t avoid, where their only choice of material is their entire debut LP, duds and all; but Jewellery is one of this year’s best albums, so why gripe? I just wish they’d been able to bring the vacuum cleaner.