The Crash - Pony Ride
The Crash
Pony Ride
Rykodisc; 2008
There are host of organizations out there designed to prevent, curtail, and/or put a stop to major forms of abuse that exist in the world. Animals have PETA and the SPCA, the environment has Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, and American citizens have the ACLU, while the rest of the world has Amnesty International – all designed to be the advocates for those who do not have the ability to protect themselves. So, who’s going to come together to protect music fans from crappy retro-cool groups? Granted, it might be a bit over-the-top and ridiculous to compare fan rights abuses human/animal rights abuses (or to even claim that music fans have “rights”), but this music reviewer is tired of subjecting his ears to yet another band’s lame attempts to strip-mine of the past in order to look hip in the present.
Sadly, record labels insist on churning out this schlock for the already deaf and dumb average American music fan, including their most recent offering Pony Ride from The Crash. Hailing from Finland, this four-piece merges together ABBA-aping string samples and keyboard swells with lame, jangling Brit-pop to create a sound that comes across as initially catchy, but becomes increasingly annoying as you realize how derivative it is. Amazingly, this is the type of trendy music that’s perfectly matched for inclusion in commercials that have been demographically matched to the newest chic product: aka you’ll want to throw the remote control through the screen after you’ve been bombarded by it for 2 weeks. The songs are either simpering, overly sweet efforts to pen “Solid Gold”-styled love songs for the ‘00s (“Grace” and “Stalker” come to mind) or barely passable indie pop tracks with faux angst (the title track and “Filthy Flower” are good examples). I’m sure that the four men of The Crash mean well, but these attempts at crafting finger-snapping, toe-tapping pop tunes come across as hackneyed and less than memorable.
