Phoebe Schmidt
Melbourne three-piece Huntly––Elspeth Scrine, Charles Teitelbaum and Andrew McEwan––make emotional, pastel-tinted techno pop. Last year's Songs In Your Name spliced together glassy synths and Funktion-1-ready bass across a three-track set that was surprisingly broad in its scope. Anchored by the lithe, light lead single "Please", it was an EP that outlasted its brief running time. Now, Huntly have released "Drop Gear", their first single for Barely Dressed Records."Drop Gear" is something of a change of pace for Huntly; while there have always been strains of techno in their music's DNA, it's never been this overt. "Drop Gear" finds the band shifting into a sleeker mode of production; beginning as a spare, open ballad, the song evolves into a dark, emotive techno-pop track. It's exciting to see Huntly capitalising on the pop slant that "Please" showcased so well; "Drop Gear"'s pre-chorus is the song's emotional and compositional heart, a bulletproof passage that proves the band's songwriting chops. “'Drop Gear' is set at the tipping point of two relationships," Scrine says of the song. "It starts messy on a hot night in summer, and it builds with the momentum of wanting someone and trying to hold it back from them."Watch the video for "Drop Gear" below: