For most acts, two weeks in the studio is barely enough time to get through pre-production and basic tracking. But for The Ponys, who recorded their Matador Records debut Turn The Lights Out in a scant two weeks, it was a luxury.
“Studio time is expensive, so on previous records we’d just bang it out in a couple of days,” says frontman Jered Gummere whose previous two discs were released on the Los Angeles-based indie label In The Red. “Before, we’d have to let things go that we didn’t have enough time to work on, but on this album we could experiment a lot more with layering and double-tracking.”
Recorded by John Agnello (The Hold Steady, Sonic Youth), the result is an ambitious collection of hazy, fuzzed-out rock songs that are both strangely familiar (“Kingdom Of Hearts” could be an outtake from White Light/White Heat) yet impossible to place, which has caused confused critics to compare the quintet to everyone from Built To Spill to the Beach Boys. Although the band occasionally gets tagged as retro, Gummere has been making a conscious effort to remain current.
“When I was younger, I was really into old punk rock and ’60s records, but lately I’ve been trying to listen to more modern stuff,” Gummere explains when asked what type of music he tends to gravitate toward. “We’re touring with Black Lips and Dear Hunter and both of those records are awesome. We also have this booty mixtape that our friend Robert made for us and that’s usually the late-night record.”
However, when we spoke to the Ponys frontman while decompressing the week before the group left for its national headlining tour, his current obsession was daytime television. “To be honest, I haven’t listened to music in six months,” he says with a laugh when asked about his current musical obsessions. “When we get in the van, we listen to records every day, so next Tuesday when we leave for tour is when I’ll start listening to music again.”
March 26, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111; 8, $13.
