PONY are a garage pop band from Toronto. CRUSHED is their début EP, a release of four songs about romance and break-ups during the summer months. You might think romance and break-ups are pretty much the same regardless of the time or season, right? Wrong. Here the heat is a tangible presence, driving people together and apart, warming hearts and soothing blows. The narrator is sun-kissed and salt-lipped and held within a nonchalant sense of positivity that means while she does care about the relationships in question, she’s not too hung up on them.
Opener ‘Don’t Go’ is a veritable jam, a summer rock song which resists the temptation to hide beneath reverb, like a Best Coast track that has been trawled from beneath the ocean haze and held aloft like a trophy. ‘Baby, Please’ is more laid back, a humid dose of teenage love and longing, while ‘My Only One’ picks up the tempo again, the jangly guitars and percussion charting a drop in the carefree attitude, the downer when you’ve been on the beach too long and your head is fried:
“Can’t stand this time of day,
sunshine won’t go away,
keeps burning at my eyes and skin.
I want to disappear
your sentiment is clear,
I waited up all night for you.Think about the days in the sand and the sun
think about the days when you were my only one.”
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Closer ‘Somethin’ About You’ sees the mood refreshed and narrator rehydrated, a sultry night-time rendezvous where the beers are sweating as much as the lovers. “I knew it was something when you came to say hi” she sings, “I didn’t know why but there was something about you.” Here every glance is loaded, every sipped drink choreographed with romantic intention. Exactly how much these girls and boys mean to one another is unclear but in these hot days and nights it doesn’t seem to matter. As she sings on ‘Baby, Please’: “I just want to have some fun.”
You can buy CRUSHED now on a pay-what-you-can basis on the PONY Bandcamp page.