Sporting a name that sounds like the winning shot in a game of hashtag tennis – #darksidebeatles bands to come surely include Dartha My Dear, Maul McCartney and Sexy Vader – Ringo Deathstarr should be a zany proposition, but they couldn’t be more serious or, indeed, singleminded. Put simply, Colour Trip is a straight-up tribute to all your favourite shoegaze and scuzzy indie records of the last 25 years. Taking My Bloody Valentine as their Space Odyssey monolith, this Texan trio set about lovingly filleting Kevin Shields’ elusive droners for hazy tidal waves of noise and dreamy snatches of melody, stopping off along the way to grab a surge of Dinosaur Jr, a bass thrum of Cure, a rasp of Jesus And Mary Chain – you get the picture.

That doesn’t mean these songs are brazen steals. The sonics are familiar throughout, but the tunes are defiantly their own. And they’re strong. Colour Trip is a cracking 30-odd minutes of short, sweet, fuzzy pop that finds captivating variety in its narrow frame of reference, darting from full-cannon rock assault on ‘Do It Every Time’ to beatless drifting on ‘Day Dreamy’ to near-Black Sabbath aggression on ‘Tambourine Girl’. Male/female vocals are shared between guitarist Elliott Frazier and bassist Alex Gehring, their range extending all the way from coy murmur to threatening murmur. No matter, they’re there to bring a human strain to the cacophony.

Colour Trip plays out as a game of two halves, its first six tracks floating on the more pliant side of murky rock, exemplified by single ‘So High’ which is almost Primitives in its jaunty catchiness, before ‘Tambourine Girl’ flicks that steroid switch. The second half flexes biceps, ‘Chloes”s vast stride darkening Elliott’s leering whisper, ‘You Don’t Listen’ racking stadium synths over raging guitars. It’s a gradual hardening that holds the attention.

Only at the end is everything stripped away, Gehring cooing spectral lullaby ‘Other Things’ over some unexpected Jam & Lewis beats. See, it can’t all be slotted into a pigeonhole, but when Frazier manages to say “never understand” on two separate tracks then apes Bobby Gillespie’s ‘Come Together’ “kiss me”s on ‘Never Drive’, the influences slap you in the face. So why not just return to the originals? Well, there’s enough vim about Ringo Deathstarr to give them a chance – if it’s honestly crafted pastiche you’re after, they’ll do just fine. At least until Palpatine Pam come along.