Tired Pony – The Place We Ran From (Fiction/Shock)

This album is the first from a collaboration instigated by the lead singer of Irish band Snow Patrol, a guy named Gary Lightbody. Apparently Snow Patrol are rather big, primarily as a result of a huge hit called Chasing Cars which achieved recognition via being on a television shows named Grey’s Anatomy.

All of this information is stuff that I was vaguely aware of but I have to admit that the music of Snow Patrol is not something that I’ve had much exposure to. I actually became interested in this album due to the identity of some of Lightbody’s collaborators, most notably Peter Buck (of R.E.M.) and fellow R.E.M. alumni, musician Scott McCaughey and recent producer Jacknife Lee. They are also joined by Richard Colburn of lauded Scottish band Belle & Sebastian.

While Buck has a tendency of popping up just about anywhere there is a studio light on he rarely appears on anything less than interesting and so his involvement here certainly made it worth investigating. It seems as though Lee is a common thread being the producer of both R.E.M.’s vastly under-rated Accelerate album and Snow Patrol’s last few releases.

I’ve read a couple of reviews that suggest that this album was intended to be Lightbody’s nod of country but it ended up sounding not that far removed from Snow Patrol, (presumably without the big hit single)

So…that’s the contextual prologue dealt with!

The musical reference points that seem to leap out at me include The Waterboys, The Decemberists and Coldplay, three bands that at first appearance have in common a sweeping approach to their songwriting tempered by an intelligent use of interesting organic instrumentation and impressionistic lyric writing.

Tired Pony cleverly avoid taking most of these songs into the epic realm and keep the grand gestures to a minimum even though a couple of the songs are almost begging for them. Held In The Arms Of Your Words is one example of this. In the less restrained hands this song could have built into a crescendo but instead it burns slowly to better effect.

Dead American Writers is almost a single with it’s buoyant up-tempo swing while the album’s opener NorthWestern Skies manages to capture the spirit of it’s lyrical content superbly – feeling claustrophobic and a threatened. It’s also one of several songs where Buck’s mandolin is a subtle but effective contributor. Iain Archer (a longtime collaborator of Lightbody’s ) takes lead vocals on I Am A Landslide which becomes the album’s ‘folkiest’ tune but one that inherited some Southern Americana flavour from another subtle Buck contribution, this time on banjo.

The Deepest the Ocean Is is a brooding and very gentle song that it one of the best on the album, and is also notable for having instrumental credits for the respective players of “feedback”, “noise”, “rubber duck” and “typewriter”. I can actually imagine this song on an R.E.M. album circa Reveal or Up.

The album closes with Pieces. This song does take the liberty of building to a more panoramic, sweeping climax and it’s final couple of minutes are more cacophonous with a mass of electric guitars creating a harsher and more abrasive sound. But it does this well and as the album’s closer it is well excused the less restrained approach.

This is an album that gets better each time you play it. There is a lot to take in both lyrically and instrumentally and it certainly manages to avoid the feeling of being an indulgent side-project. I’m not sure what the intentions are for the future of Tired Pony, but if it does transpire to be a once-off project it will have been a completely worthwhile one.

R.E.M. Latest

In R.E.M. news the band has just completed recording their next record in Berlin and according to manager Bertis Downs, “To my ears it all sounds like quite a wonderful set of songs.”

R.E.M. spent most of June at Hansa Studio in Berlin with Jacknife Lee putting the finishing touches on songs that evolved over the course of two previous recording sessions, the first in Portland in 2009 and the second in New Orleans earlier this year.

The next step will be to mix the record this American Fall. Although we don’t have a specific date for the record to be released just yet, all signs are pointing towards American Spring 2011.

In other R.E.M. related news The Place We Ran From, the debut album by Tired Pony– the group featuring Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Garret Lee, Iain Archer, Richard Colburn, and Troy Stewart–has been released this week in Australia by Shock.

Finally R.E.M.’s original Hib-Tone version of Radio Free Europe (1981) has been selected as one of the 25 songs included in the 2009 National Recording Registry which is housed at the Library of Congress.

The Registry entry for Radio Free Europe reads: “The original Hib-Tone single of this song set the pattern for later indie rock releases by breaking through on college radio. Although a more elaborately produced version of the song appeared on the band’s first album Murmur, the original maintains a raw immediacy which undoubtedly contributed to its overwhelmingly favorable critical reception. Singer Michael Stipe’s elliptical lyrics and guitarist Peter Buck’s arpeggiated open chords
would not only become signatures of the band’s future output, but added greatly to the song’s enigmatic appeal.”

The National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 established “the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress to maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and for other purposes”.