Acronyms became popular genre labels somewhere in the mid-’90s. People too cool to dance came up with IDM – intelligent dance music – a misnomer if ever there was one. Over with the goths, there was a bit more fun being had and their take on electronica became EBM – electronic body music – a relatively fitting name. Since then, the goth aesthetic has splintered with emo becoming the homogenised, overground offspring. If only the young pop-goths were listening to the EBM strand that Brisbane’s Ponyloaf are still making.
I’m not generally a huge fan of the kind of industrial electro-rock that Ponyloaf play, but it’s a testament to the band’s ability that they can draw even outsiders such as me in to enjoy this EP. Genre music can often be straight-jacketed into a set of rules and not be given the room to breathe, but Ponyloaf manage to use them more as guidelines than laws. Yes, it’s bombastic, and that’s half the point, but there’s plenty more going on than just clichés. The production is amazingly pristine. Every sound has a space and the combined effect is big. The drums are electronic and have mountains of reverb. The synths squelch in their right place and even the odd blast of white noise drone maintains its clarity in the mix. It sounds good whether pumped up on the hi-fi or in headphones. While not straying too far from formulae, there is invention in the processing. The drums in ‘Round and Round’, for example, have the slightest hint of 8-bit noise to update them from their ’80s heritage. ‘Distracted’ uses a mildly glitched out rhythm in the bridge in order to offset the early ’90s synth arpeggios.
What really helps attract the casual listener most is the quality of the melodies. The vocals are vocoded throughout and this renders some of the lyrics unintelligible, but marries their timbre to the rest of the music well. Synths and voices often merge into the kinds of melodies that pop back into your head randomly. There’s lots of trimming but, at its heart, it is a band that write songs and they do this well. ‘Davrock’s chorus of “Don’t wanna make me/feel so crazy”, or ‘Flex’s “I tried so much to understand the things you do” wouldn’t sound out of place on commercial radio as lyrics, but are given a more sinister tone in the darker context of these sounds.
It would be a bit much to say that Grey Area was groundbreaking and I don’t think even Ponyloaf themselves would make that claim. It’s sometimes over the top but it has its own dark sense of fun and a strong sense of melody which are quite appealing.
Adrian Elmer
