Labels: 54 40 Or Fight! Records
Review by: Alex Deller
Despite giving their record a title that reminds me of a rather terrible LP by a band called Trusty, Ring Cicada don’t make an unpleasant racket. Their rock is a touch too polite to truly win my heart, but they can jerk and skronk better than many others as they prostrate themselves at the feet of art-rocking cronies like Arcwelder, Shellac and Don Caballero. This means you get the stop, the start, the noise and then the quiet. The kind of thing you generally need a setsquare and pair of compasses to be able to reel off. Vocals hardly feature, but when they do they whine and croon and go as well as you’d expect. Like some kind of mix between Lou Barlow and that heroin-addled fuck from the Stone Temple Pilots, or maybe that’s just me going out on a limb with my creative licence. Arty post-rock for fans of the ponies reared in the Southern, Gringo and Touch & Go stables. You know who you are.