Pony Time - Go Find Your Own

Plagued with the world’s worst band name (in case you're wondering, it's a Chubby Checker song) and immediately hindering the band’s chances of never being compared to the White Stripes, thanks to the whole boy/girl duo vs. guitar/drums reprise, Seattle’s Pony Time make the tube amps aglow and Gary Roslie smile.

Go Find Your Own is a charming dozen of redwood cavestomping, thanks in large part to Iowa native Stacy Peck’s forward leaning drumming. Luke Beetham covers his fey yelp with lots of reverb, barely hiding the fact that he’s about as menacing as Fred Schneider in a mosh pit.

He dirties things up by sticking with distorted baritone guitar, and frequently a “fuck you” primitiveness of nothing more than a gut-punching fuzz bass guitar. It’s got a good beat and it’s easy to dance to, which is the intent of Go Find Your Own to an extent, because there are moments within Beetham’s prose where you get the impression that more time was spent working on the song’s vibe rather than the lyric sheet.

After a haphazard first half, side two begins with the slicing “Geordie.” At 2:44, it’s one of the record’s longest cuts, and it’s spent on smacking the vitriol up a notch and creating tension within its tit-for-tat guitar stabs.

The next song, “Lesbian Mayor,” cuts the time off by a minute, but raises the chaos by a third with Peck turning Beetham’s wicked bass runs into a dervish of garage punk bliss. It ends up being the record’s high point and received several post-coital spins after the glow left in the wake of Go Find Your Own’s winning second half.

Yes, as hard as it may seem, I was able to forgive such lines “I’m so hungry/But I’ve got no food/Guess I better go to the store” and overlook how this formula should have no place in my repeated listening pile of 2013. There is something special with Pony Time’s unfiltered approach, even when you get the impression that the road they’ve traveled was paved by similarly-minded folks with tons more talent.

Just the fact that they’re barking away is half of it, but the other half is understanding that a good rock and roll song doesn’t need a bunch of window dressing to begin with. With that being said, Go Find Your Own has a few good rock songs within its brief dozen.

Pony Time implore listeners to Go Find Your Own because they’ve obviously found theirs already. But if you happen to find it too, sleep on the band name to see if it has the same ring to it in the morning.