Whether or not the title of The Ponys’ new record, Turn the Lights Out, has anything to do with Interpol’s famed 2002 release Turn on the Bright Lights (or whether it’s remotely related to the fact that the Chicago foursome just got signed to Matador, making them post-punk cousins and label buddies alike) is of minute importance when it comes down to musical comparisons. It may be one of those funny things that happen sometimes, and it might put me in a mood no better articulated than, “Ponys, guitars and reverb, oh my!”
Monikers aside, and no matter how much we all <3 Interpol, there might be something to take home by putting these groups side by side…say, in comparing their live shows.
The oh-so-Interpolian experience that makes you jerk yer legs around like pegs a la (incidental) Joy Div. deserts and plateaus is a different landscape than The Ponys’ sloppy garage rock take on post-punk (we’ll call it sloppy for now). And while they might have been giving us all the garage drunk punk lovin’ we’ve always wanted in a live set, The Ponys may have taken a helpful cue from Interpol’s clear-cut distribution of instrumental parts.
For one thing, their recent tour has shown that The Ponys have really been-a-practicing, and the recorded material is self evident. The cleaner approach embraced in Lights Out rests heavily in the amount of reverb the instrumental precision can handle before it implodes. But The Ponys have found just the right amount of balance in the imbalance. Take “Poser Psychotic,” for example. Its non-stop guitar lead supports the psychosis upwelling in higher sonic registers of the song, letting the drone accentuate the action rather than defining it.
This dead-on instrumentalism is grounds for lofty sonic ventures, yes, but it also merits The Ponys’ choice to crank up that noise more so than their two previous albums. After all, reverb works even better when you’re playing your shit straight-up instead of a run of sludge you might have not excused Jimmy Page for had he used reverb instead of his trademark fuzz.
Now about those waves. Lights Out begins clearly enough, guitar-delays of “Double Vision” entering from different fields and turning into ear candy for hopeless fools like me (especially glorious on headphones). Shortly after the first instant you hear bassist Melissa Elias’ observant, almost plucked bass. Then comes the turn: you get those erratic, punctuated vocals from singer/guitarist Jared Gummere. That’s the imbalance giving you a jolt you never hear in noise pop.
But the best part of the The Ponys’ record is that it somehow manages to keep a live energy among instances of compactness, as with the album’s closer, “Pickpocket Song.” The synth-induced staccato carries the song as the tumbling bass simultaneously paves through until it breaks—with what sounds like Theremin twirls—into an endless live jam session. Artifacts such as these would make it into Nuggets had they been recorded 40 years earlier.
The sheer tear of this album is a garage rock that doesn’t rely on restless melodic signatures and kicking o’ the amps alone. Other great numbers include the title track, with its long-drawn guitar hook and a delicious crunch that makes you feel like you’re swinging down a street at midnight rambling along to the unison of vocals with your best buds and a 40. The opening 2-chord reverb on “Shine” creaks open with screeching guitars into short-lived verses with vocals resembling a warped Beta Band. The second half of the song meditates in a guitar solo gushing with melodies and pedals alike. You certainly don’t get stretched out slow-tempo solos like that anymore…especially ones ending in delay.
With a little bit of nostalgia, instrumental rehab, and a room full of reverb, The Ponys make a pretty clear case for where they’ve been and where they stand at present. They ain’t prancing on anything brand new, nor are initiating an all-too-familiar callback to past decades. That’s the beauty of it. It’s not so overpowering that every other kid at the dorms is going to reach for that bin (or “Buy Early Get Now” offer), but listeners eager or unaware have no choice but to take that ride all the way through with Turn the Lights Out.
