On their second album, Ohio\u2019s Ass Ponys unleashed, in this writer\u2019s opinion, the strongest set of songs they would ever release. Teaming up again with Afghan Whigs\u2019 bassist John Curley as producer, on this effort the band had a bit more experience under their belt and their musical chops have improved quite a bit as a result. Chuck Cleaver\u2019s voice and songwriting and the musicianship of John Erhardt, Randy Cheek, and Dave Morrison help to push them over the edge; too bad the rest of the world didn\u2019t stand up and take notice.<\/p>\n
I mean, how bad can the world be if songs like \u201cIt\u2019s Not Happening\u201d and \u201cNo Dope No Cigarettes\u201d exist to lift the listener out of whatever existential crisis they find themselves in and allow the sunshine to come through. At the same time, the songwriting heads a bit into the darker side with songs like \u201cNot Since Superman Died,\u201d \u201cI Love Bob,\u201d and my personal favorite \u201cJulia Pastrana,\u201d a tale of a hideous sideshow freak who died during childbirth and how her husband went insane touring with her mummified corpse. You\u2019ll never see Fall Out Boy writing stuff like this! This is just one of the many great things about alternative rock in the \u201890s: dark, dark songwriting that wasn\u2019t all about suicide and depression.<\/p>\n
The record was released through two small indies and never really found a place, but the band was able to land a deal with A&M and released two records there. Those albums are good, but they didn\u2019t have a song with the power of \u201cThe Big E,\u201d a song about a boy setting fires that get out of control featuring great songwriting and musicianship all around. <\/p>\n
This release is worth the price of admission alone. If you aren\u2019t familiar with this record, do whatever you can to track down a copy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":33375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10113],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-45191","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ass-ponys","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45191"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}