Playing spot-the-influence with modern bands is inevitable, but it's particularly hard to avoid with the Ponys-- whether it's the Television or Richard Hell comparisons that followed their 2004 debut, Laced With Romance, or the more stark affectations of bands like Joy Division or early Cure that followed 2005's Celebration Castle. Their sophomore effort seems too indebted and stifled in retrospect, while their debut feels more like guiltless, gleeful re-appropriation and unrepentant bright-lights aspiration, and has since become the band's albatross to try and improve upon. That hasn't changed with the band's third effort (and first for Matador), Turn the Lights Out, but some other things have: It appears that when second guitarist Ian Adams left the band after their second album, the cleaner, post-punk Britishisms went with him. Turn the Lights Out is also the band's first record with fellow Chicagoan Brian Case, formerly of 90 Day Men, and while it may be more consistent than Laced with Romance, it's admittedly maybe half as fun. It doesn't quite have the delightfully snide semi-reverence of the debut, but it's a step closer to it, and possibly a step closer to the Ponys finding an identity of their own.
Not that there's isn't the shadow of influence here. Case is a good fit for the band and a subtle accompanist most of the time, but he's the key ingredient to covering Turn the Lights Out with familiar haze, making the guitars all sound like Sonic Youth Lite-- all cool guitar tone, none of the unpredictable noise jams. There's an audience out there who'd love to hear a Sonic Youth record without all of that (maybe some of them even bought Rather Ripped), one who might tune into Turn the Lights Out. It helps that the Ponys stay consistent with it, incorporating that mighty echo throughout most tracks, with just a few exceptions: The embarrassing, organ-baked title track or the slick jangle of "1209 Seminary".
What they can still do is write an opening track that overshadows the rest of the album. Just as it was with "Let's Kill Ourselves" or "Glass Conversation" before it, nothing on Turn the Lights Out quite reaches the heights of "Double Vision". It's a seemingly simple song that's nonetheless hard to pin down, shifting subtly as soon you want to label it. It builds like a jam-session skeleton, with a sleepy drumbeat and a modest strut of a bassline while singer Jered Gummere coos like Thurston Moore over more wavering guitar echo than notes. Big, staccato chords and insistent bellowing follows, then paint-peeling fretwork and that damned bassline again. Hard to complain about frontloading with a track that plays hard-to-get so well, but luckily there's reason to keep going: "Small Talk" is a bubbling lament that floats by with a tender vocal and the barest touches of guitar, letting the busy rhythm section carry the aching melody. "Shine" starts as a sluggish two-chord lighter-lifting anthem, but soon becomes three different sluggish, yet effective, anthems over the course of its four minutes. "Kingdom of Hearts" is the candy-cigarette exhale of satisfaction from the record's strong first side, a sweetly melodic slow burn of narcotic strumming and a shuffling beat where Gummere's detached vocals suit the track perfectly.
"Poser Psychotic" apes SY the hardest but manages to imitate the slow, inexorable builds of Dirty as well as its guitar tone, and its momentum carries through to the final moments of the album. They've written a fine batch of songs that serve the new sound well; I just wish it were the other way around for once. The Ponys make good records, and Turn the Lights Out is no exception, but I'm still waiting on the great one I've always felt they'd had in them-- one that delivers on the promise of their debut, and reminds you why you pulled out their record ahead of all those whose shoulders they've stood on.
