Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip

I once had a chunter with Phil over his ongoing love affair with some of the contemporary shogazers like, say, Autolux. I thought it had all been done so much better before, therefore considered it pointless to be recycling tremelo-d guitars & wispy sad dreamy vocal harmonies. And, you know, thrashy drum rolls & wah-wah cathedrals of gothic glass...whatever. It all died with 'Blonder Tongue Audiobaton' by Boston's Swirlies. They sewed the whole genre up into a maelstrom of whizzy berserk indie rock and drop kicked it into the Atlantic. Or so I thought! Now the Texans have taken up the contemporary baton to shake up the scene, and what a great debut full-length 'Colour Trip' is! Opening with the early Medicine-aping 'Imagine Hearts', every colour & shade of the dreampop/noisepop/shoegaze canon is explored enthusiastically, without fear & the result is a massively lively, youthful, exuberant & passionately played record that easily stands alongside many key albums from the original era. They're often a bit heavier & boisterous than peers The Pains of Being Pure at Heart were on their debut, but retain the fuzzed-out guitars, excitable pile-driving drums, cooing multi-layered vocals that collide like lovers kissing....and most importantly - I cannot stress this enough - absolutely beezer tunes. No honestly, the single was merely a tease! 'Colour Trip' is a really relentlessly catchy POP album, the most fun thing i've ever heard on this label! No risk of dull pastiche anywhere to be heard - somehow blatantly derivative but remarkably fresh, glorious & alive! Catch them live too, they're quite the buzz!