Pony Up! – Barfly, Cambridge, 07/11/07

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The main motivation for heading down to The Graduate in Cambridge on a cold mid-week evening this week was, it must be admitted, the support band. Our friends in The Puncture Repair Kit – Cambridge’s up and coming cardi-core supremos – had bagged a support slot, and their shambolic multi-instrument-abusing, indie twee is always entertaining. A last minute call from TLOBF honcho Rich Hughes, however, asking if I could review the night, left me honour-bound to pay close attention to headliners, Montreal all-girl group Pony Up!

This is a band that, despite a BBC 6Music Hub session and a few radio plays, had not really crossed my radar before now. Friends whose musical taste I respect, however, had made positive noises about them, so I was interested to see and hear what they were all about. Their unintelligible press release (full of nonsense about “existential dream teams”, descriptions of “latter day mistresses of bittersweet revel” and the like) left me none the wiser as to how they were actually going to sound, so I approached the night with no preconceptions.

The opening number sounded like they were aiming for shouty femme pop-rock (a good thing) but came across instead as a bit whiney, not helped by lyrics including that reliable adolescent fallback “the world is against me”. A few more songs in and I was struggling to find anything especially memorable – louder upbeat numbers were mixed in with a spot of piano-led balladry that at times drifted dangerously close to Keane territory.

Mid-way through the set one of the two members who alternated on lead vocal duties attempted to rev up the crowd by asking to be shown “how hard Cambridge rocks”. I always rather object to this kind of thing: surely the onus should be on the band to make the crowd “rock” – the fact that the audience was standing pretty unmoved was, I’d say, down to the lack of excitement that they were generating, I’m afraid. The main problem here was, I think, the lack of any memorable tunes or hooks. They play their instruments well, and the two vocalists can hold a tune but this is pretty lowest-common-denominator stuff for a touring band, surely. The best song they did (possibly called “Do What You’re Told”, or at least featuring lyrics to that effect) came when they did a quick set-reshuffle. This was lively and had a decent melody to accompany it, and is perhaps the one song that I would recognise if I heard it again.

After this, though, interest was unfortunately not maintained. I as ashamed to admit, in fact, that I left one or two songs before the end of the set – a combination of boredom and the lure of The Graduate’s comfortable downstairs sofas. On this evidence it is difficult to understand Pony Up!’s appeal. Did I catch them on an off-night, perhaps? I would be genuinely interested to hear others thoughts, but I’m certainly not able to give the band much of a recommendation based on this performance.

Links
Pony Up! [official site] [myspace] [album review]
Photo [sam turner]