Ringlets: The Lord is My German Shepherd (Time For Walkies): (digital outlets)

When I reviewed Ringlets' single I Was on That Roof Once released in advance of this album I quoted what I thought were the lyrics to point out the surreal nature of their imagery.

I heard “like the sea I am burning from the algae of tsunamis”.

I was corrected, it was “I am foaming from the algae that's inhabited my gob”.

I was close, but not close enough.

Either way, they are very odd lyrics, and that is some of Ringlets' forte. They are clever.

The shorthand for this Auckland four-piece – here on their second album, their debut reviewed very favourably at Elsewhere and everywhere – 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.

This album – an extension of that smart, 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 which 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”); 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 twelve 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 listener expectation like a post-punk version of early Split Enz – surprise frequently in these 40 minutes.

Not often you hear “hemiparesis” in a lyric.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.