Images Of Sigrid (studio album) by Poni Hoax

It is the midnight sky, it is tribal, it is the mirrors of the eyes. Brilliant songwriting and engaging. Like the ghosts of one thousand different pasts. This album will be with me for a while! Fantastic music!

From sageamagoo 10/30/2012 01:31

One of my favourite albums by a much-overlooked band that deserves a good listen with high-quality headphones. Each and every song is a favourite, and the variety promotes many listens. Not to mention the length- this is a good 70 minutes of quality alternative music!

And applause goes out to whoever produced this thing: unlike their first LP which had great songs but muddled tracks and a feeling of enclosure, this album sounds very open and has a wonderful stereoscopic view of each and every little detail, especially in moments like the sax and percussion solo in The Bird Is On Fire and the wonderfully beautiful ending to the title track; you can't help but treasure these rare gems of soundscape goodness.

But that doesn't even scratch the surface.
The album in constructed in 3 movements: tracks 1-4 are extremely varied and almost avant-garde in the sense that they dare to produce such variety within such a short timespan.

This opens the album to the sense of cohesiveness present in the second movement, tracks 5-9. They are much slower and more melodic but never feel redundant; in fact they each create their own little world with which to relate, like the feeling of unfulfillment in an otherwise perfect life in Images Of Sigrid (We can never be too happy/So we wrote it as a law/We should not feel so lonely love/The sickness has to go) and the thought-provoking repeating line of the chorus (There are no clouds/Only blue skies). It's the perfect example as to how deep this record is, and how very overlooked this fantastic band has become.

Lastly, we have the 3rd movement, containing the buildup of Hypercommunication to the quirkiness of You Of The Broken Hands, and finally to the apathetic conclusion inherent in the statement that "All Things Burn". What this last song lacks in musicality it makes up for with surprisingly well thought-out and sometimes cryptic lyrics for a band whose native language is not English. (Strike a match, burn a flag/To keep you warm,)(A place you've always seen/Corridors, purple lights,/A three-legged cat,/A brand-new nurse, haunted houses,/ Hungry words). But then we have the soft 13-minute finale. A 3.5-minute ballad followed by a 10-minute ambient track that's so trancy you seem to forget its monotonous nature and instead clear your mind to absorb an excellent left-field closer that leaves one feeling surprisingly energized and somehow content. I keep thinking that the next time I hear it, I'm going to skip the closure, but every time I find myself thinking "Oh, just let it go for another minute" and lose track of time entirely.

All in all, this is a must-hear for people who liked Demon Days: Although not even close to the caliber of that masterpiece, Images Of Sigrid stands up as an alternative album for the ages and certainly will be liked for similar reasons. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.