by Rob Moura (@tapedeckpod)
It might not seem like it, but Ringo Deathstarr have been around for a long, long time. Formed in 2007, they started as classic shoegaze revivalists (a trend that was already rampant in certain underground scenes earlier that decade) and stayed together long enough to see indie music adopt the sound so thoroughly that it catapulted Slowdive into a surprising career comeback. The common problem with shoegaze is that it’s a style that’s easy to execute but hard to make unique, which is what the Austin cult band has attempted to do over the last decade. The results speak for themselves; 2011’s Colour Trip and its follow-up Mauve provided a decent stopgap between the Loveless remasters and MBV, but 2015’s Pure Mood began the processing of carving a unique identity, one that felt like an evolution of that classic aesthetic instead of repeating its successes.
Now, at the start of a brand-new decade, the band’s back again with another subtle development of their sound. True to the nature of self-titled albums, Ringo Deathstarr condenses everything special about the shoegaze purveyors into one complete package, but it also feels like a self-conscious look back at where they’ve come since. It may not bear the visceral punch of their earlier material, but it feels more esoteric, more open to other influences. The wall of noise we’ve come to expect has opened up to a chamber, as evidenced on early track “God Help the One’s You Love,” which is spacious enough to bring the term “cinematic” to mind. Those tributes to Kevin Shields are still here, like the whammied “Once Upon a Freak” and the knowingly-titled “Gazin,” but as always they’re done with dignity, with a demonstrable understanding of what exactly makes that style of song work. There are moments where the record arguably runs just a little too hard into identikit territory, like Souvlaki outtake “In Your Arms” or the Jesus and Mary and Ringo Chain track “Lazy Lane,” but over a decade later, obvious pastiche has become a part of the band’s charm.
More importantly, there’s enough new territory covered across the record to constitute a curious sense of discovery. Ambient opener “Nagoya” is stark and pastoral; “The Same Again,” with its polyrhythmic drum part on the verse, juts out at thrillingly unpredictable angles; “Be Love” is also stellar, alternating between a “Soon”-like warmth and a discordant, distorted chilliness. Despite the familiarity of the styles present here, they’re presented with a curator’s eye for variety and pacing. Of course, it’s all lifted by excellent production, which reveals new angles to the band’s assault while retaining their unfiltered muddiness.
The hardest part about keeping a “revival band” alive is striving for an identity that sets you apart from the aural iconographies you seek to revive, and for Ringo Deathstarr to have survived for so long signifies what they’ve done to set themselves apart from their peers. Their devotion to classic shoegaze is respectable, but it’s the tiny touches they’ve added to their approach, and their confident willingness to embrace pastiche for the sake of chasing a feeling, that make them something special. After all, that’s always been the end goal of shoegaze: whatever goes into it, the result is an undefinable feeling that bypasses logic and hits the heart. For that purpose, as well as being a testament to their years of hard work and a summarization of their incorporative sound, Ringo Deathstarr undoubtedly succeeds.