Colour Trip

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Album Review: Ringo Deathstarr – Colour Trip

By Adam Kivel on April 11th, 2011 in Album Reviews






It’s a good thing no one ever told the three Texans behind Ringo Deathstarr that shoegaze’s day in the sun has passed. Elliott Frazier, Daniel Coburn, and Alex Gehring revel in the fuzzy, reverbed noise of My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Just as with the classic records produced by those legends of the mid ’80s-early ’90s, there are some conventional melodies and songs buried deep down in the piles of effect-laden guitars. The vocals are typically muddied and the drums thunderous. Deathstarr seem to be taking the same cues that The Pains of Being Pure of Heart are, adding their favorite elements of current dream pop to the whorls of traditional shoegaze. Those little additions, though, remain minimal at best, instead relying on the tropes of shoegaze come and gone.

“Imagine Hearts” opens the disc with some brief, off-kilter, cacophonous noise, before a ready-to-gaze song pushes itself forward. The song’s lurching drums, howling guitars, and loping bass thrum along for a couple of minutes, Gehring lithely murmuring over the mix. The vaguely serene tone of the understandable lyrics and the slinky, ear-shifting bass line betray the aching, uncontrollable guitars, leaving the song a compellingly mixed punch. “Do It Every Time” follows with a rare sort of energy, Frazier taking over vocal duties.