The amount of thought and attention poured into the four tracks on Songs In Your Name make it clear how dedicated Huntly are to their craft. The Melbourne three-piece make pop music with an electronic basis that is highly melodic but imbued with an uncommon emotional honesty and intelligence.

There is a lot of space left in the tracks between the beats, synth sounds and vocals and so the production is never allowed to overtake the focus from the songs themselves. However these aren’t exactly pop songs that follow traditional formulas, as the structures twist and evolve fluidly in a natural, if somewhat eccentric manner.

The lyrics manage to remain emotionally sincere without being trite, and are delivered by singers Elspeth Scrine and Charlie Teitelbaum in an unaffected and refreshingly un-self conscious way, even when pitched or effected.

There is plenty of diversity on show here with Please standing out as the most ‘singley’ of the bunch, while Kate’s Bed is a dreamy downbeat number, and Templehof is almost a nod to 90s R&B. The final song is an instrumental remix of Please that showcases the heavier electronic side of the group’s production, and is almost a dance track.

Originally published in Beat Magazine.