Stuff I've Been Into Lately-The Ponys

Good Evening, Moggers! It's been a while. Life has been interesting, espescially from a musical perspective. A friend of mine gave me tons of post-rock and indie-pop lately, which I still have to really sift through. So far though, I really enjoy Broken Social Scene, Explosions in the Sky, and The Shins. Though tonight, my focus is my most recent actual purchase: The Pony's Turn The Lights Out. This delightful Chicago group has been recording music for six years now, and somehow has escaped my discerning ear. Their latest is, really, precisely the type of record that the indie scene needs right now. While impressionistic, ecelctic and impeccibly produced kaleidoscopic pop along the lines of say, The Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, is all well and good, it lacks power, energy and attitude. Turn The Lights Out provides just that via the time-tested combination of noisy guitars, propulsive rhythms, and catchy melodies. At first glance, it's nothing terribly earth-shattering: This tradition dates back to at least Dinosaur Jr, any number of shoegazer groups, and Sonic Youth's more accesible work, and arguably even further back to bands like the Velvet Underground and Hawkwind. What makes Turn The Lights Out important is the degree to which the Ponys let their pop tendencies take over, and how often that works to the benefit of the music. As catchy as a tune like Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot" was, it was still very much a song for the art school set, with its nearly seven minute length and loose structure. When The Ponys tackle similar songs, for example "Small Talk" or "Poser Psychotic," they wrap up the proceedings in about four minutes, and in fairly conventional form. While the Ponys' pop sensabilites and accesibility are indeed part of their charm, one wonders if their is something lost. What made all of those loud, arty guitar records of years past so appealing was that the music wasn't necessarily for everyone. There are moments when the Ponys' falter, for example, the John Lennon pastiche of the title track, which has the dubious distinction of being the only track which succumbs to hipster irony. The band also trips up on "Exile On My Street," an anti-Iraq war statement that attempts to lend some profundity to a substandard track by way of appeal to a trendy political sentiment in a move reminscent of "The Price of Gas" from Bloc Party's Silent Alarm.Despite these minor issues, Turn The Lights Out is a great psychedilic, poppy punk record, and one of the best releases of the year thus far.