Ponies in the Surf, Ponies on Fire

reviewed by dave heaton

What does the word "timeless" mean when you're describing music? Some might use it to mean that the music will leave a legacy, be remembered in centuries, but that's a guessing game I'm not willing to play. I keep thinking of the word "timeless" in relation to Ponies on Fire, the first full-length album by Ponies on the Surf, but I mean it in a different sense. The Massachusetts-based, Bogota-raised brother-sister duo of Camille and Alexander McGregor creates music which doesn't sound like it comes from today or yesterday, or any particular time period. It feels old and new at once. It isn't retro, yet it does stir up feelings of nostalgia. But they're not for one place or time, more like a vague aura of the pleasures of the past, combined with a newness that's distinctly of the present. You know you're hearing new music - it's very vibrant, full of life - but it also feels like an escape to some imaginary place where multiple eras and places co-exist at once. "I've got a secret place / it lives inside my head", Camille sings on one song ("Slow Down Sugar"), and that's what the album feels like, like a journey inside two people's imaginations, where so many whims, inclinations, and inspirations live together.

Ponies on Firecontinues the path laid out by the duo's first two releases, the EP's A Demonstration and Death of a Librarian. That is, delicate pop songs with a European flair, a psychedelic folk feeling, and the unrestraind creativity of children's songs. The album seems even broader stylistically. There's moments of swing, points where you think of ragtime, a gospel song ("Sing My Lord"), a song where you feel like you're out in the middle of a prairie ( "Mimi Come Home"), and even a piano intermission at the album's halfway point. Yet they take all of these styles and mold them into one unique sound. Never does it feel like we're being run one direction than another, or like we're at a costume party. It all fits inside the storybook that is a Ponies on the Surf recording.

The album has an even dreamier glow about it than the EPs. It opens with Alexander strumming his Spanish guitar and Camille's pretty voice existing in a haze, buoyed by the moody playing of an organ. "One dollar a secret", she repeats, appropriate words for an album that sounds like it's filled with secrets. A song like the Twin Peaks-touched "Fairy in My House" manages to sound both like surrealism, a tale of fantasy, and a sweet, compassionate lullaby, directed not at the imagination but the heart (and, I shouldn't refrain from mentioning, like a great pop song with a catchy tune). In a sense the entire album comes off like both a fantastic daydream and the sort of astoundingly gorgeous music that can't help but touch your heart.

Ponies on Fire's last track "Aviary" (the album's most overtly psychedelic song perhaps) brings this all together in a delightful, disorienting way, with a kaleidoscope of colors and tunes that sounds like it was recorded inside a music-box time machine. Its sweet, strange sentiment is "Keep me company in our aviary in the snow". It's a beautiful song, though not technically the last one. After it comes a brief ad jingle for the Pony Express, a weird, appropriately anachronistic way to close up this musical trip out of time.

{www.asaurus.org, www.poniesinthesurf.com}