A sardonically intelligent all-girl quartet, Canadians PONY UP have been winning friends and influencing all the right people via supports with several fine, W&H-endorsed oddballs such as The Mountain Goats, Tilly & The Wall and Camera Obscura on the run up to their debut album, 'Make Love To The Judges With Your Eyes.'
Released by the ever-vigilant Laughing Outlaw label with equally impressive production credits - Brian Paulson (Beck, Wilco) & Howard Ian Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade) - it's an intriguing first salvo too. On the face of it, it appears a relatively linear, jangly'n'chiming pop affair, but there's a distinctly noticeable seam of melancholy being mined below the surface and occasionally a truly raunchy, libidinous streak also beckons you in like the proverbial fly into the spider's parlour.
No more so than on two early highlights, opener 'Dance For Me' and 'Possible Harm'. The former is a brittle, piano-led lament sung by keyboard player Laura Wills (the 'straighter' of the band's two vocalists, though still slightly warped and kooked) culminating in her admitting "I've got that look in my eyes/ and you know that I could eat you alive." Ooh, saucy - though it's equalled by the deceptively sprightly 'Possible Harm' where - over a simple piano and bass motif and spiky guitar from second vocalist Sarah Moundroukos - Wills manages to sound both sincere and utterly reckless when she dispatches the chorus line of "I took you into my arms/ what possible harm could I do to you?" What indeed!
Elsewhere, Moundroukos takes over on slightly quirkier, idiosyncratic vocals, though her musings are no less compelling. In fact - unusually - two of the album's absolute highlights come slap bang in the middle of the record courtesy of 'What's Free Is Yours' and the excellent 'Ships', both sung by Sarah. The former finds Laura swapping her piano for Fender Rhodes and the churchy, faux-religious atmosphere works beautifully against the grain of this song of heartbreak and loss. The ensuing 'Ships' is arguably even better, sounding like a half-sister of 'What's Free..' only slower and dripping in tangible hurt. Actually, when Sarah sings "I keep looking down when I'm looking to see I don't trip/ and I think by now you've noticed I don't desert a sinking ship" it might just be the most moving (and defiant) moment here.
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The one criticism I would level at the record is that it's arguably a little too samey in terms of pacing, with a few too many medium-paced tunes smouldering away but refraining from opening the throttle too much. This isn't to denigrate the quality of the playing, mind, but it's good to hear them cranking it up a little more towards the end of the album on songs like 'Pass Time Endeavour' and - especially - 'Make, Model, #' where urgency, angularity, disco beats and organs thrillingly kick in to create perhaps the record's best pop moment. This latter song is also responsible for surely the record's finest lyrical observation (and it has stiff competition) when Laura sings the immortal line "he tries on women like shoes."
Overall, though, 'Make Love To The Judges With Your Eyes' is a consistently impressive, if sometimes dangerously obsessive debut. It signals the arrival of an emotionally-charged quartet whose tuneful provocation is going to raise a few eyebrows and pick up a good few staunch supporters along the way. Just one thing: what the bloody hell is Pony Up supposed to mean? I'm damned if I can work it out.
(www.ponyup.ca)
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