Pony Unveil Sophomore Album “Velveteen”

There’s a long tradition of bands that can compellingly explore the nuances of the human experience within the confines of pop music, that can elegantly consider both the lighter and darker elements of life through a deceptively sunny-sounding three-and-a-half-minute song. On their sophomore full-length, Velveteen, Toronto’s reigning power pop champions Pony manage the task with both finesse and panache across ten irresistible tracks that further cement their place in the genre’s lineage.

Influenced by countless hours of self-reflection, literature, television and insomnia, the record showcases the band’s elevated sound and is their most fully realized to date, examining the complex relationships between longing, connection, and being true to oneself. For singer, songwriter and guitarist Sam Bielanski the time around writing Velveteen included a nine month struggle with insomnia, during which they reached for the nightly balm of an audiobook of The Velveteen Rabbit. The classic tale resonated so deeply with them that it ended up inspiring the album’s title and influencing the themes that run through it, feelings of existential dread or worthlessness, as well as self-acceptance and vulnerability.

“I became obsessed with it but I always fell asleep before getting to the end. The way I interpreted the story was that it’s the love that we give and receive that makes us real or whole. The one chapter I found especially heart wrenching is when the velveteen rabbit is trying to hang with the real rabbits of the forest, and through comparison, he realizes he isn’t as real as he thought he was. It was a good lesson for me, even now, because I’m constantly fighting the urge to compare myself to others. Your individual experiences make you who you are and nothing can change that. That’s what I thought, until I finally listened to the whole thing and found out that at the end of the book, a fairy turns the velveteen rabbit into an actual rabbit, which I felt undermined the earlier lessons of the story. After that, I was really confused.” (Sam Bielanski)

Velveteen is now available via Take This To Heart Records, the album is musically scaffolded by a hyper-catchy concoction of ‘90s college rock, its more radio-friendly contemporaries, and early ‘00s alternative that manages to reference over three decades years of guitar music, while never being at odds with itself. Bielanski’s read of a stuffed rabbit’s quest for self-acceptance is the beating heart that gives Velveteen life, the album’s considerations of love, finding a feeling of belonging and the pursuit for authenticity are woven throughout it’s grooves. Pony will be celebrating the release of Velveteen with an album release show on May 26th at Toronto’s Drake Underground with support from Roach.