2008’s great lost album: Poni Hoax – Images of Sigrid

Sometimes an album completely escapes a massive chunk of people who’d obsess over it, and it’s totally not fair; we’ll ignore the fact that we discovered this album almost four months after it was released. And sometimes you discover an album you want to keep to yourself because, y’know, you’re a bit of an elitist really. Well, very often, these two moments coincide and you’re left with a moral dilemma.

Then, the crux smacks you hard in the face. Why has this album grabbed me on the first listen? And why do I want to listen to it again and again? What is drawing me in? The answers to these questions are something we’re not entirely sure of, but there are certainly some common factors. We’re more likely to be drawn in by an artist having a distinct sound. Not something altogether original (although depends on your perception of ‘original’), but distinctly their own. And within that, some sort of ambit of variation and ambition. And if you’re reading this here review, then this must go without saying.

So, Images of Sigrid… we knew nothing about Poni Hoax other than that they’re from Barbes, France. And the fact that they make the most glorious disco we’ve heard this side of the Italians Do It Better compilations. Getting to the next level, Poni Hoax’s frontman Nicolas Ker has more than a touch of the Ian Curtis/Nick Cave lovechild about him, but let’s not get mistaken here: Poni Hoax are way more than a sum of their parts. Blacker than midnight disco is what this is, rooted in Depeche Mode and Gang of Four as much as it is in Giorgio Moroder.

It might well be about suicide, or failing that some sort of self-derivative, egotistical step-back on the character’s impact on/among other people – and it’s these ambiguities which make for a great repeated. The efforts at macabre seduction are endorphin-addled and simply screaming the juxtaposition of nonchalance and melodrama.

‘You’re Gonna Miss My Love’ opens with those choppy Franz Ferdinand guitars and then goes all disco with that charismatic, ever-so-slightly flat vocal layered on top of angelic choral backing vocals. And ‘Crash-Pad Driver’ opens like The B52s on horse tranq, soon turning into a feast of syncopated synth. The sound throughout is devastating, the vocals potent, rough and lonesome. There’s bits that remind us of Talking Heads, others that are altogether more Cramps-style garage punk – it’s a pick ‘n’ mix, really.

With the dichotomously deadpan vocal sitting neatly atop the weighty, dirty disco, this is an album that we sit and ponder about for long periods on end… would X Factor-watching plebs like this if it was forced on them? If ‘Antibodies’ was used for a trailer for Skins, would Poni Hoax become the next big thing? The answer to these questions (and more along those lines) is obviously an affirmative, and if the wigs making the decisions on what to shove down the herd’s throats next had a smidgeon of sense between them, then this Barbes lot would be The Next Big Thing. In the meantime, they’ll just have to suffer the criminal injustice of being sat in a small pocket in the corner of the room, waiting to be romantically uncovered and fallen in love with upon appropriation.

Running at 71 minutes short, the ambition on this album is boundless. It’s impossible to demarcate a comfort zone where Poni Hoax situate themselves, as they’re constantly striving to take on a different sound. Music is ambition. Life is ambition. Why not take it?