By Henry Lipput
Shoegazing is alive and well and living in Germany.
That’s right. The German three-piece Jaguwar’s debut album, Ringthing, is just the ticket for fans of walls of sound, shoegaze, noise, and, last but not least, pop.
Made up of Oyemi Hessou on vocals and bass, Lemmy Fischer on vocals and guitars, and Christoph Krenkel on drums and percussion, the band obviously owe a major debt to the work of My Bloody Valentine but have brought other influences along for the, er, Ride.
Ringthing begins with "Lunatic" in which the guitars sound like wind chimes and then the band kicks in. Krenkel's drumming from the start -- and throughout the album -- is fantastic and as important to the band's overall sound as the layered guitars and vocals. Hessou sings lead on this track, as well as on "Gone," the glistening "Night Out," and "Away." Her voice brings a lightness to the noise and is one of the many treats on the album.
Fischer's lead vocal on "Skeleton Feet," as well as his work on other songs, recalls the singing of Robert Smith of The Cure. The song, after some guitar blasts, opens up into a tunefest not unlike that band's "A Forest." Cure-like sounds are also very much a part of "Crystal" (check out the strums and lead guitar work) and "Week" adds a lot of loud, layered MBV guitar as well.
"Gone" is one of the album's highlights. Starting with backwards guitars that sound like an outtake from The Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping," the song becomes the perfect pop shoegazer listen. "Gone" isn't a single (yet), but it certainly should be.
At the risk of offending fans of My Bloody Valentine, the mix on Ringthing is a very different beast. Although the vocals by Hessou and Fischer are, for the most part, placed at the same level as the instruments there's a clarity to Fisher's production work. He has built a wall of sound that allows listeners to hear the materials that were used to make it.
Ringthing is out now on Tapete Records.
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