Occupying a kind of salted soil middle ground between My Bloody Valentine and late era Jesus and Mary Chain, Texan trio Ringo Deathstarr project their influences through a fractured prism of their own construction to create a sophomore album that is both referential and innovatory.
Colour Trip locks together in an episodic cycle describing arcs of inner and outer space with equal dynamism and feeling. ‘Imagine Hearts’ launches from the MBV pad, accelerating away from gravity as banks of guitar squall strafe across a muted vocal. The song twists in and out of shape as instruments drop out of the mix and control panel dials run backwards. The disc hits a kaleidoscopic form of hyperspace early on, as ‘Do It Every Time’ crunches through two-and-a-half manic minutes of space trucker rock’n’roll. As zero-gravity seeps in the aural capsule is filled with ‘So High’s perky C-86 indie pop, wherein a simple bubblegum verse is juxtaposed against a soaring, harmonic chorus.
As the Trip strives ever onward, ‘Two Girls’ sees diaphanous layers of guitar and vocals buffeted by solar storms of pounding rhythms as walls of fuzz emerge from the broiling cosmic slop. Things reach a form of transcendental quietude during the disc’s middle section – the aptly titled ‘Kaleidoscope’ sets a reflective velvet vocal against a serrated backing, while ‘Day Dreamy’ reveals itself as an ethereal evocation of the sound of dead teardrops evaporating under ultra-violet assault before melting away amid a churning calliope of sound.
‘Tambourine Girl’ sounds exactly like one might hope a track record by a group called ‘Ringo Deathstarr’ would do, as stone-age rhythms are interspersed with escape velocity psych-pop to create a ray gun marriage between the Partridge and Manson families. Equally affecting, ‘Chloe’ sounds like the aftermath of a massive detonation, as sound moves in front of itself while the simple meter of the lyric grounds twisted Hibakushi sonics.
The Deathstarr spacewagon reaches speeds at which all matter becomes intangible for ‘Never Drive’, as restrained vocal urges anything but restraint. ‘You Don’t Listen’ sees the band occupy the ‘Upside Down’ region of the MBV/J&MC Venn diagram, before ‘Other Things’ closes the album with a beatific comedown. As the Deathstarr arcs soundlessly across the heliosheath of our solar system, an 808 throb and muted coronal fuzz underpins a sweet vocal from the edge of our small corner of the cosmos. The journey continues…
Originally posted 2011-05-11 16:39:52. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
