High Diving Ponies
Post-Shoe Gaze
Is it believable to say that a post-shoe gaze trend is emerging? British bands like Ride, Lush, and Slowdive were some of the more familiar names pegged as shoegazer bands circa late Eighties and early Nineties. The term “shoegazer” is associated with bands that eschewed front man appeal and crowd-pleasing antics. Instead, they supposedly gazed intently at their shoes while playing guitar and standing still. However, it’s the sound of the music that more accurately typifies this sub-genre of ’90s-era alternative music. Clear vocals and melody took a back seat to a guitar-driven, effects-laden, and feedback-heavy sound that was characteristically hazy and distorted.
Acts such as Cocteau Twins, Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine were predecessors to bands dubbed as shoegaze such as Chapterhouse and Catherine Wheel. The short-lived sound evolved and wasn’t easy to classify or pin down like grunge which manifested a few years later. Once the juggernaut of grunge music stomped from the Pacific Northwest past the fringe of disaffected youth and onto mainstream radio, the harder-edged, abrasive sound and stylistic fury of acts like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney led to the declining appeal of droning, pseudo-psychedelic shoegazer music. Angst got a whole new attitude.
Like the mythic snake that swallows its own tail, trends of yesteryear are bound to manifest again with a few twists and interpretations. Apparently, nu-gaze or post-shoe gaze is now slithering through indie music. Indie bands such as Longwave, Van She, Engineers, M83, The Drop Nineteens, and Asobi Seksu are creating music that bears traces of the dated shoegaze and subsequent Britpop era. Yet, each of these bands are quite different from another and none outright mimic the original shoegazers.
Generally speaking, artists from one generation channel influences from the music they savored while growing up. As ideas and an affinity for a particular sound takes shape among separate sources, it is inevitable that music media scanning the radar and forecasting trends will pinpoint and lump together several acts as the forerunners of this or that movement.
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High Diving Ponies, Witch and Hare, Me and My Arrow (MN), LoveLikeFire (CA)
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High Diving Ponies - Meatheads
This brings us to Kansas City’s High Diving Ponies, a band that references itself as post-shoe gaze danger pop music. Formed from members of Spidermums and The Factory Workers, the makings of High Diving Ponies includes Josh Thomas (guitars, vocals, noise, recording), Alheim Amador (bass), Justin Brooks (drums), Steve Williams (cello), and Kyle Pugh (guitar).
Recently, High Diving Ponies have shared rough mixes of five tracks from their first full length work-in-progress. The band is “inspired equally by off-tempo, angular early '90s guitar rock and '60s girl pop. High Diving Ponies mask their poppy melodies with layers of feedback and cello so as not to be shunned by hipsters.” Hmm, so what is really going on here? A few listens offer a clue.
“Drugs in My Dreams” has a snappy beat. Williams’ cello scissors its way across subdued vocals and muted guitar, gently knifing at thin air as Amador’s bass trudges along.
Burning seconds off the clock quickly, “I Smell Like Smoke” runs a minute-and-a-half. The song is a kissing cousin to the unplugged, lo-fi aesthetic of Nirvana. Guitar and drum chug away as the strained, back room vocals of Josh Thomas summon the ghost of Kurt Cobain.
Listening to the third track, “Meatheads,” it is apparent why High Diving Ponies considers its sound as post-shoe gaze. Here, the vocals are buried beneath layers of tin roof and asbestos. Fuzzed-out guitar shimmers with feedback, ripples across decades, and bounces off the wall of distortion once churned out by Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver, and the like.
“Muppets” hints at the more melodic girl pop sound of High Diving Ponies. A catchy, off-kilter guitar groove and indiscernible vocal muscle their way through the freefall of crashing cymbal-heavy drums. If The Pixies and My Bloody Valentine double-dated with The Beatles and The Shangri-Las, then a mashup of them all making out would sound like “Muppets.”
“You Get Paid When You Die” propels itself on hard-charging drums, guitar battered with ball bearings, and the junkyard dog howl of Thomas reverberating off chain link fences and sheet metal.
These five working tracks––out of an anticipated 15-song full-length recording due this spring––make it evident that the band is determined to create articulate noise. Say what?
High Diving Ponies does not wish to be “shunned by hipsters.” Surely, the band jests to a degree. Yet, there exists a breed of hipster music fan that believes in getting “it” before the masses do. Mind you, the It factor must not be spelled out or reduced to a lowest common denominator. Otherwise, the music is too commercial and accessible for said hipster. So, the Ponies obscure their vocals and chords just enough to forge something that the hipster or avid listener must grapple with or simply revel in the sculpted noise.
Here’s some pure conjecture about the launch of post-shoe gaze in the vast and varied indie music ocean. The Ponies are swerving away from contemporary indie rock/power pop sweetened with over-the-top power vocals and über-pop arrangements a la American Idol. You know, the cultivated emo, monster ballads, and ringtone blip-pop that dangle before us like a huge lollipop. Rather than create and express with crystal clear harmony, melody, and pristine vocals, perhaps the Ponies are articulating with structured noise from distorted guitars, fuzzy bass, and crashing drums.
Defining themselves as post-shoe gaze danger pop can mean anything for High Diving Ponies. Once their debut record is released, listen closely to those garbled vocals buried beneath guitar pedal effects and feedback. The meaning of what it's all about might emerge before the hipsters move on.
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