With their third full-length release in little over a year, Emperor Penguin continue to refine their blend of surprisingly tough beats, cheap keyboards, varied samples and vocodered sloganeering. Where Extreme Gaming found the duo putting their spin on a handful of discrete genres, from lo-techstep to funk to easy listening, Mysterious Pony finds them moving closer to what could be described as a singular style. I would argue that Mysterious Pony's more focused sound makes it just a tad less engaging than Extreme Gaming, but fans of their earlier releases (and homemade beat-pop in general) will find themselves getting down to this sound with relative ease.

Though Emperor Penguin seem to be moving away from the genre-obsessed style of their last album, many previous elements are still intact. One of the more regrettable of these is an over-reliance on goofy vocal samples. Mysterious Pony begins with a quote from Rod Serling that's cut off to make it sound like he's introducing the band (essentially the same technique was used to open Extreme Gaming) and the stage is set for a retread. Opening a sample-driven record with a quote is as inadvisable as writing a poem about roses; as listeners, we've simply heard too many.

This minor complaint aside, the return of other Emperor Penguin sonic signatures is welcome. The synthesizer work is brought to the fore this time out, revealing strong melodic tendencies on songs like "E.D.G.A.R." and "Hardcastles in the Sky." And songs like the title track and "Rockin' Radio" feature speedy guitar solos that, when heard surrounded by beats and square-ass keyboards, are pretty amusing. The guitar style is something like Kenny Loggins' fretwork on "Danger Zone," a bizarre and long-lost signifier that points up a strength of Emperor Penguin: Like so much of their abundant output, it draws from a retro page that has yet to be turned.

-Mark Richard-San