Well, well, well. Its not every weekend you're gonna find Wild Ponies in a Bearwood library but there you go.
Nashville's alt-country Wild Ponies, featuring vocalist/stand up bass player Telisha Williams and guitarist husband Doug plus assorted pals, can make a racket akin to a rockin' Ryan Adams and are not averse to a touch of the strained sensitivities of the Civil Wars here and there either. It's all rockin' n rollin' up in a country way to the Thimblemill library on Saturday, January 28th.
Although deeply entrenched in the Nashville music scene... (Their song, Radiant, the title track of their most recent album, was co-written with student Mariah Moore, whom Telisha and Doug tutored on a nashville country music association outreach program...) The Wild Ponies sound can veer a little more toward West Coast country, I think you'd agree. A stripped down, Bonnie Owens/Merle Haggard thing. Maybe no more so than on the title track of their 2013 album Things That Used To Shone. Not so much of the Billy Sherrill production values. Or Nashville as Seen on TV. Mercifully. Oh and not to obfuscate, some of the most recent material can reach into what I call and no one else does, Eno-Country. That beautiful, breathless, delicate, shimmering, deamy guitar and vocal country... You wanna go there.
I am going to tell you that you are going to hear great, breathtakingly exceptional songs. The withering need and desire of "I'm Gonna Make You Mine" feels like a threat... OMG if you're as as damaged as me it reads like a typical lost Saturday Night/Sunday Morning of dreams. And the delicious archetypal country twang of Trouble Looks Good On You... And then there's the The Amazing, Love is Not a Sin, so prescient this week it feels to me, could be the country counterpart to Macklemore's emotionally emptying Same Love. Anyway, that kind of comment on commitment means something to me.
What that all adds up I think is a remarkable, challenging and joyous Saturday night in store for everyone who can make it over to the library. As a bonus the openers will be Birmingham's Lost Notes.
I'd say the WIld Ponies are most likely the best thing that's been in the library since the put they books in. Don't Miss.
Essential Info
Wild Ponies
+ The Lost Notes
Thimblemill Library, Bearwood
Saturday January 28th, 7.30pm
Tickets £5
www.wildponies.net
Advance Tickets: Skiddle
