The Ponys, Kings of Alternative Rock!

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Venue: Kud FP, Ljubljana
Concert date: 31.05.2007
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 12 euros

The Ponys finally made a stop in Ljubljana for the first time in their six-year career. Given the meteoric (if underground) fame they’ve earned with three studio albums and a handful of singles, it’s no surprise that quite a few devoted fans showed up at Kud FP. Even though their music never gets played on commercially minded radio stations, it can’t be kept down, and in physical form it has found its way into our little country too.

The psychedelic side you can occasionally catch on their albums was completely missing at the show. Live, The Ponys get high on punk ethics, so they play their songs very directly, with no unnecessary frills and with fairly even emotional intensity, while still keeping their technical precision and polish.
And even though the songs come across a bit monotonous at times (the producer clearly plays a big part in creating the sonic variety on the albums), they still manage to hold the tension right to the end. It’s probably precisely because of this focus on keeping the tension up that the set, encore included, ran just over an hour. The Ponys are simply short and punchy, and they don’t waste time or energy on repetitive jamming that would surely have added a few extra minutes but more likely would have just dulled their edge.
With almost no banter in between, the quartet, made up of Jered Gummere on guitar and vocals (and keyboards now and then), Melissa Elias on bass, guitarist Brian Case and Nathan Jerde on drums, played a few songs from each of the three studio albums, with an emphasis on the latest one, released this year, Turn The Lights Out. Among the newer tracks, “Double Vision” and “1209 Seminary” came off best, and among the older ones, the Dinosaur Jr.-flavored “I Wanna Fuck You”, which already sounds downright anthemic even though it was only released on the EP Another Wound.

Jered, now with long hair that kept falling over his eyes the whole time, looks like some cousin of Mark Arm from Mudhoney. With the height of Chris Novoselic! The most eye-catching of the four and positively overflowing with energy, he even treated himself to a little “excursion” into the crowd at the end, where he played a short solo (otherwise, guitar solos, at least the conventional kind, are more the exception than the rule with The Ponys). Throughout, he and Brian shared the lead guitar work fairly and equally, though Brian mostly stayed on the fringes, almost out of the spotlight. Melissa was just as quiet and reserved. With her bass, in a cute skirt and with her hair tied up in a messy ponytail, she mostly kept company with the drummer and the guitarist, who were also pretty unconcerned with the audience.

It’s interesting how close to the originals (the songs immortalized on the albums) The Ponys play live, too. Not in the sense that they don’t indulge in improvisational twists or radical rearrangements, but from a sonic standpoint. Both guitarists use the same effects as on the albums, the rhythm section of course stays within its own set path, and the vocals are just as strong, maybe a little more interpretive than on the studio recordings. Only the echo that usually accompanies Jered’s singing is missing. The difference is mainly in the level of energy they serve up, and the feeling that they know how to conjure the sound of real underground, that dirty New York sound that made careers for many bands The Ponys surely have up on a pedestal, even though they themselves come from Chicago.
The Ponys keep their take on Rock & Roll damn alive, and for everyone who missed this electrified dose this time around, all that’s left is to hope they come back soon.