Graham Reid | | 1 min read
With so many young (and sometimes belatedly emerging) artists coming through, it's inevitable we will miss some.
How many?
Of the 13 artists named on the cover of the May/Jun issue of NZ Musician, Elsewhere had only been aware of – and written about – one them: Hans Pucket.
Imagine our surprise also to learn that 23-year old Taylor Roche has had 14.1 million likes on TikTok (where posts every day, “just everything and anything”), speaks of his “brand” and has released 10 singles in the past four years.
We'd never heard of him. But then as we often say, he doesn't make music for us.
Ringlets – who are currently enjoying the same kind of attention among the young cognoscenti the Beths had in their early days – have been known to us although we hadn't, to our knowledge, heard anything by them.
But when we saw their name mentioned among the 21 artists being presented at the Going Global Music Summit in Auckland (Sept 1 and 2) alongside Anthonie Tonnon, Grecco Romank, Mel Parsons, Vera Ellen and Tom Lark – whom we have written about – we thought it was time to check them out.
We didn't realise this was long overdue because this self-titled debut album was released back in April and they have signed a distribution deal with the tiny US indie label Mutual Skies.
Ringlets are bassist/singer Arabella Poulson (like the Beths and others, a jazz school graduate), singer Leith Towers, guitarist/singer Lazlo Reynolds and drummer Arlo Grey.
They have been described as post-punk and that's mostly true (I Used to Paint, Snitch Olympics) but – given their pop sensibilities and obvious musical abilities – perhaps post-New Wave might be more accurate: they have that jerky economy (Nightmared), broodiness with guitar jangle (Fever Dream in Broken Swedish) and crisp pop dynamics (Boundless Heart).
There are echoes of the American New Wave (Sever, Made of Mist) and, in Towers' delivery and accent, Eighties British guitar bands (She's An Ascetic).
So, Ringlets' debut album: 10 songs in fewer than 34 minutes, an impressively diverse collection of self-produced originals sharply delivered, engineered by Olly Harmer and mastered by the Beths' Jonathan Pearce.
One we are sorry we missed at the time but are very glad we eventually got to.
Maybe we should check out the enormously popular Taylor Roche?
(Actually we just did, and as expected, he doesn't . . .)
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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