The Ponys

Double Vision

The Ponys c. 2006. Photo: Slugmag.com

Good Morning!

Today we’re listening to “Double Vision” by The Ponys

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The Ponys were a Chicago-based band in the early ’00s. The band’s trajectory is familiar.

Frontman Jered Gummere met his girlfriend, Melissa Elias, while she was at Illinois State University. The two started making music together and playing around with different styles before eventually moving to Chicago.

Once there, they connected with a local scene vet, drummer Nathan Jerde. Now a trio, the band dropped a couple of singles and became regulars on the local scene. Eventually, Gummere asked another scene vet, Ian Adams, to join them, and they became a quartet- and one with a much fuller sound.

They managed to put out a couple more singles before releasing their debut LP, Laced With Romance. That put them on the radar of the national press, getting ink in places like Spin magazine. They then hit the road, opening for bands like The Fall.

With burnout creeping in, they checked yet another box and recorded their sophomore record, Celebration Castle with Steve Albini. They hammered the release out in less than a week. Adams hit the exit and was replaced by…another local scene vet, Brian Case.

And the band went out on tour again.

They kept moving down the list and, at this point, signed with Matador. In 2006, they went into the studio and recorded Turn The Lights Out.

A lot of the bands we get compared to aren’t really even ones that are my main influences. They’re bands that I like, but they’re not ones that I grew up listening to.

~Jered Gummere¹

“Double Vision” is the record’s opening track, and in many ways, it sounds like many bands. After a listen or two, you will likely be able to list out a couple. At the time, more than a few reviews compared Gummere’s vocals to Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. That’s certainly fair.

To me, the opening riff evokes King Missle’s “Detachable Penis” from the same era. Both are easy comparisons but border on reductive. The band’s sound shifts far too often—even in this song— to place them neatly in any box.

Or on any one list.

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More:

…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…

Click here to read the rest of the review.

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Listen:

“Double Vision” by The Ponys | Turn The Lights Out, 2007

Click the record to listen on the platform of your choice.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this track!

Thanks for being here,

Kevin—

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1. https://www.slugmag.com/music/interviews/music-interviews/tiny-horses-in-a-big-big-world-an-interview-with-the-ponys/