When music and lyric transcend the literal they can become the language of the esoteric. Each person interprets them differently, each can find their own respite, their own revelation, what they thought they had lost, what they had always been looking for.
The legacy of contemporary communication forms, the brevity, the speed, the need to create identities in all forms of social media, has co-generated a collective nostalgia for the crystalised memories of what we thought we had lost, what we didn't realise at the time, what we feel we're missing but cannot describe.
In our relatively affluent society, we try to buy it back. It is impressed on us that our currency is the gatekeeper to our happiness. But increasingly we find the visions and meaning have to go deeper -- it has to be about reclaiming the innate. It comes back through the attempt to relive through memory, through aspiration, through deja rêve (previously dreamed) to deja senti (previously felt).
Deja Vu is an eclectic mix of songs balanced with wry humour and insight. They transcend the literal through past lives; in perpetual loops of misfortune; in youth and the biographies of the understated; in loves and the choices we may or may not have made; what we want to forget, and what we are waiting to realise.
You can listen to the whole album here.
"So Much Said" opens like a shooting star or a firework screamer, taking us back to July 1967. Inspired by Patti Smith's Just Kids, the song travels vicariously through New York paying homage to those she loved and cameoing others who changed the course of art and music.
While Pony Face inscribe this rarified environment, they simultaneously enable us to make our own connections. The opening verse draws on those sleight moments when light and sound transfigure our perspectives. Images scattered through the lyrics remind us of times when we could not place intentions; when actions belie meaning; when our reality is redefined by new beauty.
The fourth stanza offers unexpected grace, reiterated in the prelude to the title and the coda. From here the song shifts focus to love requited, reminding us of those moments of profound emotional memory. This is reiterated from 3:21-3:43 by the guitar ringing out in two eighths, then a quarter note like the perpetual and emphatic promise of those three little words.
"Justine" was a judicious choice for the pre-release single of the album, dealing with the familiar feelings of incredulity and disbelief when we are rejected by a lover for somebody else.
Simon Bailey and Shane O'Mara open and close the song with satirical guitars that accentuate Justine's disregard of the protagonist. His perspective is evident in the guitars between 0:46-0:55, and unfinished but axiomatic lyrics signalling resignation. The song draws parallels between the impenetrable mindset of Justine with the joining of a cult -- hinting to the site of the Manson family house in Chanoga Park (which was dubbed The Submarine due to its yellow paint).
The song ends with the play on the emphatic in the protagonist's final plea, appositely highlighted by the cymbal riding at 2:56 to the end of Bailey's ranging cry at 3:11.
"Neptune Twins" is a tribute to the Gibbons sisters. It is believed they developed their own form of cryptophasia when they emigrated to the UK and were shunned and bullied by their new community. The girls became selective recluses and stopped communicating with those around them. They wrote plays and stories in their room, from which they took a short-term respite when they became interested in some young American sailors. From their detailed diaries there remains conjecture about the nature of the relationships, but it was evident that they were heartbroken and possibly abused by the boys.
In a form of retaliation, the girls became pyromaniacs, leading to their incarceration. This became a long-term sentence as the psychologists and staff were baffled by their speeded patois and slowed behaviours. Ironically, the girls' diaries evidence heightened tension between them, each willing the other out of their lives, culminating in attempted sororicide. Despite this, the girls maintained a deep understanding of each other, honouring their idiosyncratic pact in mysterious circumstances.
The premise of "Undercover" is self-evident. It paces and races like its theme while the lyrics create fragmented coherence.
The eponymous "Mt Deja Vu" was inspired by a story of how the allies sent service dogs to wounded men, strapped with morphine and cigarettes. The sitar and mellotron in this song evoke the ethereal state of mind of the soldier as he wrestles with liminality. The beautiful transition after 2:08 is highlighted by the drums and percussion, and after 3:50 with effects signal the crossing between deja vu and deja vecu (previously experienced).
"Red Revolver" conflates the iconic and the classic of 50s greaser. Working class love is a model for everyman who has watched the object of his affection seek love somewhere else. All that counts is social cool, a good car and maybe a little contraband to change the course. This song is gonna catch you waist down with swamp rhythm and Hawaiian guitars. Opening with Mickey Thompson's ghost, Pony Face take you back to the drag track where girls lost their hearts to the fastest boys that sometimes didn't live long enough to tell the tale.
"Stitches" is my favourite song on the album. I've spent a long time trying to work out why. There aren't any overt hooks. Then I realised that its beauty is in the subtlety of the beautiful effects and structural integrity - both musically and as a lyrical composition. But it's more than that - the metaphors are open, each one is something to which we can link some of our greatest affect. It's true though, some of them may slip away. The most visceral comes from the music like an unexpected lover.
Listen to the first minute. In contrast to the rest of the song it's composed of two minimalistic guitar lines, like the heartbeat and the voice. This changes around 0:56 when it gains momentum and a haunting back line that evokes deus ex machina. This song stands close to "Stars Are Bright" in relation to form, bringing it home in the last quarter. You're gonna have to listen to them both to know how it feels.
"Turnaround" is an episodic ballad set over seven incarnations, like a feline emulation. In this song, each stanza exquisitely evokes the overarching theme of the record - the unlikely and the likely, how these both run like parallel tracks, strangely tractable; unable to be distracted or detracted by fate.
Evidence of Pony Face's ability to translate themes into music is so evident in this song. The Celtic rhythms and turn of the drums and percussion evoke consolation through its beautifully perpetual cadence.
"Heartbreaker" epitomises the most familiar and most poignant. The simplicity of the music and the lyrics belie the intention. It encompasses everything we wish for, and what we'll put on the line for it.
"Trinity River" incorporates the same affecting musical devices of the opening to "Stitches" with a haunting mellotron and ghosting double vocals as the chorus opens at 1:54.
This is an apposite concluding track to the album. After travelling through memory, through what has been strange, and close to what has been most important, we come back to a marginalised reality that seems inherently familiar. Like deja vu. The use of spoken word and the outline of misfortune are things we all know well.
In this song the drum, bass and mellotron craft it perhaps even more strongly than the lyrics and guitars. This song is subtly entwined with the macabre, lyrically and thematically, but it stands as impossibly beautiful because of the grace afforded by the instrumentation, that closes with the gentle anticipation of release from 4:45-7:07.
Pony Face craft songs that go beyond everything we know to give us day-dreamscapes that enable us to follow our heart. In those pervasive moments, we don't always find the words or the time to be objective. We are so immersed in our experience we don't see the light, or the darkness. But in each of these songs Pony Face integrate words and sonic intuition to find a resonance with those experiences and reclaim what we had lost, or to send it carefully on its way. To reconsider the repercussions and to change the course.
You can get one of the few remaining copies of the coloured vinyl here, or download a digital copy of their full discography from here.
See them live in NSW in April and Victoria in May.
Additional dates have been announced for NSW in August, and their Ten Year Anniversary gig in Melbourne on 10th August.
