Going to the zoo can be a depressing experience: the badly kept cages, the artificial jungle vibe and the stench of sun lotion mixed with sweat make you wonder why you came in the first place. And when you get to the animals themselves, they look so bored and unhappy you either want to go straight home or open the cages and tell them to go back to the jungle.

Ross Farrar, lyricist and singer of California punk rockers Ceremony, uses the zoo as a metaphor for what people do to entertain themselves in the 21st century. Turns out that, mainly, we watch other people do stuff: in films, on YouTube, on Twitter, and of course at live shows.

While this isn’t the most revelatory observation ever made, it serves its purpose as an overarching idea that holds together a dozen taut and melodic songs that mark a clean break with the bleak and fast hardcore of the band’s first three records. Similarly to the way in which The Horrors discovered My Bloody Valentine and Neu! after their first album, Ceremony seem to have been turned on to the post-punk of the early and mid-’80s – with impressive results.

Farrar has traded the muffled, angry scream of old for a wry, more restrained delivery that leaves a bigger scope for irony and melody – think Colin Newman of Wire or Clint Conley of Mission of Burma. The music has been slowed down a notch too, which helps to accentuate the muscular, precise guitar work that evokes US garage rock from the ’60s as well as current Matador labelmates Fucked Up.

Advance single ‘Hysteria’, with its urgent, rolling beat and catchy chorus, set a high standard that is maintained throughout the album. ‘Brace Yourself’, one of Zoo’s longest songs at 4:11, combines a Jah Wobble bass line with a krautrock beat and apocalyptic lyrics about a “pacific made of ash”, while the closer ‘Video’ is a rumbling, claustrophobic rumination about the loneliness of two people on either side of a television screen.

Farrar has stated that he wanted to look at humanity in a less accusatory way. The lyrics don’t entirely bear this out – there is still a lot of spite and desperation – but the music is certainly a lot more nuanced and accessible; which makes listening to Zoo an entertaining and engaging, rather than depressing, experience.