Ringo Deathstarr – Shadow

What’s in a title? Well, rather a lot if Ringo Deathstarr’s new EP is anything to go by. The interesting thing about a shadow is that it would seem to indicate darkness, but in fact can only exist with reference to the light it’s blocking out. And that’s rather like what Ringo Deathstarr’s music sounds like. The best songs from last year’s debut album (see: ‘Imagine Hearts’, ‘Two Girls’, ‘You Don’t Listen’) always sounded like straightforward pop songs obscured by a darkly shimmering, buzzing wall of audio cotton wool – ‘Shadow’ repeats the trick.

‘Just You’ is remarkably quiet for the band, a fifties slow dance heard through a broken megaphone that waltzes its way through periods of undulating distortion. ‘New Way’ takes a different path, harking back to the band’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-them early gigs as chanting vocals are swallowed by a relentlessly powerful drumbeat and an explosive outro that comes just after the one minute mark. ‘Prisms’ follows with a comparatively languid (and, after the last track, a little dull) stroll through smoky ambient territories.

But it’s the title track that, understandably, most epitomises Ringo Deathstarr’s dualistic approach. ‘Shadow’s double set of vocals become the centrepiece as Elliot Frazer’s throaty hollers both contend and merge perfectly with Alex Gehring’s husky intonations. It’s this merge of styles into a seamless whole that makes the EP work quite so well and, just like light and shadows they’re invoking, it’s beginning to seem like one style without the other just wouldn’t make sense.