Ass Ponys
Some Stupid With A Flare Gun
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Four years after getting dropped by A&M, the Ponys re-emerged in 2000 with this stellar album of idiosyncratic narratives. Guitars crash majestically while Chuck Cleaver howls in wonder and terror at the world. In Ponytown, people have names like Casper and Magnus, babies are born with third nipples, and something dark and dangerous is always coming through the cornfields.
Plenty of small-time bands combine everyday observations and tough guitars, but Ohio's Ass Ponys make that style their own. On Some Stupid With a Flare Gun, frontman Chuck Cleaver turns his flexible tenor to songs that threaten to slide into gothic territory. Rotten luck, confusion, death, suicide and even attempted
Read More resurrections are never far away from the weedy lawns and good china of songs like "Pretty as You Please" and "Astronaut." Produced in Nashville by Brad Jones with that town's common-sense approach to musical structure, Some Stupid hews closely to melody without limiting Ass Ponys' adventurous side; the terrific bassist Randy Cheek, for example, shines like some lost Motown pro on "Swallow You Down." Two ballads -- the transcendent "Your Amazing Life" and the deceptively plain "Kitten," in which the world of emotion itself seems at stake -- are highlights. This is blues- and country-flecked rock that's as smart and pointed as you're likely to hear. (RS 843)
JAMES HUNTER
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