Musical Style
Rings Around the World is "very cinematic" and falls somewhere between the Super Furry Animals' 1999 album, the "instantaneous, easy to grasp, and almost disposable" Guerrilla, and its "exact opposite", 2000's Mwng. The band combined the technology they used for the former with the simplicity of the latter, which featured "just the band playing in the studio". Singer Gruff Rhys has described the album as the band's "cosmic rock record".
The album is a "kaleidoscopic blend of pop, prog, punk, psych, and electronica". Drowned in Sound describes it as similar to Guerrilla with "Beach Boys-esque psychedelic pop ... put to techno undertones" while the NME has called Rings Around the World an "expensive, glossy production ... lush and widescreen" and suggested that it "reaches for an effect so modern that at times it sounds like it could've been made in the '80s". The first single, "Juxtapozed with U", is reminiscent of both the Philadelphia soul music of the 1970s, and the "plastic" approximation of that music on David Bowie's 1975 album Young Americans, while "No Sympathy" has been described as the "missing link between Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young-scatted harmonies, jungle hi-hats and berserk sampler techno". The Dallas Observer compared "It's Not the End of the World?" to tunes such as The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset", Dennis Wilson's "Forever" and Jack Bruce's "Theme for an Imaginary Western" while The Big Issue called "Sidewalk Serfer Girl" "surf-punk electro pop". Elsewhere on the album the eclectic range of sounds continues from the trip hop of " Touch Sensitive" to the Status Quo-esque "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" and the "electro country rock" of "Run! Christian, Run!".
The track "Receptacle For the Respectable" reflects the eclecticism of the album as it "undergoes a complete personality change" over the course of its four-minute thirty-two-second duration, veering from prog rock to death metal. The song begins as an acoustic guitar-driven pop song and then shifts into a slower bridge section which leads to an even slower coda which has been compared to the music of Burt Bacharach and The Beach Boys' Smiley Smile album and features Paul McCartney chewing carrots and celery to the beat. The track ends with a "pantomime death metal" section with Rhys's "distorted, bellowed vocals" screaming the title phrase. According to Cian Ciaran, the song initially comprised just the first two parts when recorded at Monnow Valley Studios but, by the time the group relocated to Bearsville Studios, Rhys had written and added the third section. While there the band added the fourth section by "pissing about with Pro Tools", looping the bass from the end of the third section "by accident" to create the musical backing. A fifth, hip hop, section was discussed but the band decided against it, reasoning that "if you're going to do a fifth bit, you'd probably do a sixth, and before you know where you are, you're doing a concept album made up of nothing but bits!". According to the band, the track is the only time on the album where they tried to achieve comedy and "completely went with silly streak".
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