The Ass Ponysby Rob Sheffield
The Ass Ponys’ America sure is a grim place: all small-town despair, nuclear-family breakdowns, grandmothers who build crucifixes out of matchsticks, kids who torture bugs and grown men who can only explain their existential dread with references to Kung Fu, Scatman Crothers and “Smoke on the Water.” But somehow, these Ohio dogs turn their angst into rootsy, bleak and hysterically funny garage rock, topped by lead singer Chuck Cleaver’s falsetto, which evokes the sound of Neil Young getting felt up by a gorilla in a high wind. And on last year’s Some Stupid With a Flare Gun and the brand-new Lohio, they’ve suddenly made two of the best Americana-style rock albums anybody’s heard in a rabbit’s age. Where do they get their inspiration? “I don’t have fuckin’ two nickels to rub together,” Cleaver says helpfully, “I live nowhere. I’m in a little fuckin’ house in a little fuckin’ town. And I just turned forty-two. It’s, like, sign us up for Cocoon 3.” In 1994, the Ass Ponys fluked their way into a minor hit with Electric Rock Music. But their follow-up, The Known Universe, flopped, and the band dropped out of sight. “We were just regrouping,” Cleaver says. “Telling each other everything was gonna be OK.” The highlight of Lohio is the second track, “Kung Fu Reference,” a hilarious but devastating ballad about staying up late watching bad Seventies TV reruns while the one you love is sleeping in somebody else’s arms. Just don’t expect artistic success to cheer these guys up. “I’m not an especially effervescent person,” Cleaver admits. “I would love to be a happy clam all the fucking time, but it just doesn’t happen. People who know me always maintain that, regardless of how much success I ever achieved, I would still be a miserable old fucker.” --RS
(Rolling Stone, August 30, 2001. Issue 876.) |