Pony League Ditch Punk for Southern Folk-Rock

Atlanta’s Pony League is some of the guys from one of the most fun punk bands in recent memory, North Trolls, casting the best kind of silliness aside to explore folk-rock songwriting from a distinctly Southern point of view.

New album A Picture of Your Family’s title track and other slowed-down numbers explore the type of regional story-songs that drive the Americana hype train. Writing country-ish songs alone would find a band like this one lost in the pack nowadays. Fortunately, other reference points come into play. At the album’s peak moments, flashes of Southern rock piano and nods to such dad-folk-rock legends as Jackson Browne flavor the band’s homages to regional music.

This genre-defying approach is less country or folk and more akin to the various ways rockers, from Macon’s Capricorn Records heyday to the various indie scenes to thrive over the years in Atlanta and Athens, embrace their Southernness.

What’s most Atlanta about this whole presentation is how the characters in these songs often have to deal with shitty traffic. Two of the better songs are even called “Stuck on 85” and “Mile Marker Dance.” Atlantans will commiserate with these songs, while OTPers (that’s outside the perimeter-ers, for all you OTPers) will remember why they avoid the big city.

Photo by Craig Carlson.