Ringlets: Post-punk with a grip that won't let go

NZ Herald

5 days ago

The Ringlets: Imploding post-punk styles into an album with a grip that won't let go. Photo / Lola Fountain-Best
Graham Reid is an NZ journalist, author, broadcaster and arts educator. His website, Elsewhere, provides features and reports on music, film, travel and other cultural issues.
The shorthand for Auckland's Ringlets invariably mentions 'post-punk', a term so broad it includes the skewed pop of Toy Love, the mayhem of The Fall and Pere Ubu, the jerky rhythms of The Feelies and Talking Heads, and the left-field rock assault of Headless Chickens and Skeptics.
If 'post-punk' means anything it may just be expression, off the leash.
Ringlets' second album – an extension of their clever, free-wheeling, self-titled 2023 debut – is certainly that. At various points it implodes many post-punk styles into an album with a grip that won't let go.
At the easy entry end is the anxious pop of Heavenly Wheel ('quick, say something profound') and the deceptive, folk rock-adjacent Rolling Blunts on the Dresden Codex, a title that shows Ringlets are clever clogs.
Elsewhere there's the gloom drone, wired-up Posh Girl Holds a Whip about bondage and punishment: 'private education just couldn't iron out kinks in leathery hide. Skin tight to callipyge' (look it up); the snappy I Was on That Roof Once ('spewing aphorisms rolled in glitter balderdash') and the agitated rhythms of Sucking on a Surly Pout paralleling a suffocating dream: 'Caught in a loop rewinding … there's no way out.'
The more measured Half an Idiot devolves into brittle guitar and an angry, agonising scream about the hospitalised results of 'when you mix 12 standards with a quad bike'.
Despite its squelchy rhythm, This Year's Hottest Movie ends the album on its weakest note.
But mostly the well-presented and butter-wouldn't-melt Ringlets – confidently twisting art-pop and expectation like a post-punk version of early Split Enz's unpredictability – surprise frequently in these 40 minutes.
It's not often you hear 'hemiparesis' in a lyric.
This album is available digitally and on vinyl. Ringlets tour: Wunderbar, Ōhinehou Lyttelton, August 1; Secret Show, Ōtepoti Dunedin, August 2; Meow, Te Whanganui a-Tara Wellington, August 8; Whammy Bar, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, August 9.