Taking a Sonic Ride With Ottawa’s Pony Girl at Big Winter Classic 2024
Photo Credit: François Mittins
Reverie sat down with Pascal and Yolande of Pony Girl, Ottawa’s premier art pop outfit, to chat about their latest release, Laff It Off, out on Paper Bag records. The last time they were in town was during the sunny days of 2023’s Sled Island; this time, enjoying the chinook filled weekend of a particularly beautiful Big Winter Classic, where they rocked one of Calgary’s newest venues, BLOX Art Centre. We had the chance to take a peek into their 10 year evolution, what’s in their notes app, and really explore the lustrous cinematic and sonic universe that is Pony Girl.
Reverie: How would you describe Pony Girl and your sound?
Yolande: *laughing* the only reason I'm laughing is because I find that when we are faced with this question, it's always been difficult to answer! I think we just explore a lot of what we like about different styles, and I think the best way to describe us for now is art pop. But we're just diving deep into what we enjoy listening to mostly.
Pascal:
I think we all have very diverse musical palettes. So it's usually a mix of everything we've listened to, and I guess in the pop fashion we sort of pick from all those different influences and put it together into something that's like a neat little package for us. I think we're always changing, looking for what's going to be our next sound.
Reverie: You've been active since 2012 - How would you say your sound has changed over time?
Yolande: I think looking back at 10 plus years ago, we were completely different people. I think in your early twenties, you're just trying to figure out who you are as a person. And now that we're in our thirties, we're all a little bit more established and just confident. The big difference for me is 10 years ago, I think we were just exploring, and we were not listening as much. We were all just trying to introduce ourselves into the mix without looking at things in a holistic manner. These days we're really trying to picture songwriting as something that's extremely collaborative, where we're all equals and really investigating “how do we make the best song ever” instead of “how do we insert ourselves into each song individually”.
Pascal: When we started… there was just less knowing because we didn't know what we were doing, and we were just doing it because it was fun; it was something we all wanted to do but didn't really know how. So it was a lot of trial and error, a lot of DIY-ness kind of thing. We recorded everything ourselves, all our videos. Like everything. We would just do everything. I think the best thing for us has been just letting go of that control. I think it's helped us actually grow - that's been the biggest change.
Reverie: That is a perfect segue into the first question I had about Laff It Off; What's the background behind this album’s release? What's the story?
Yolande: Laff It Off was actually written at the same time as Enny One Wil Love You (2022). And so when we went into studio, we actually just tried to record as much as we could. It was the first time we actually got a grant to do some recording, so we got into a professional studio. It was first time working with a producer, Phil Charbonneau. So we were really just trying to professionalize at that point and, you know, get your money's worth out of the grant! So we just recorded a bunch of songs… we toyed with the idea of releasing a mega album, but then eventually settled on two albums and spacing out the releases made more sense. So I can't really describe, Laff It Off without talking about Enny One Wil Love You because they go hand in hand. Enny One Wil Love You is the more produced electronic album, whereas Laff It Off is a little bit more contemplative and sounds a bit more live and gives you much more of a band experience.
Pascal: Because it was our first time going in studio and trying to record music differently, those things also came about while we were working on it. Like Yolande was saying, [Enny One Wil Love You] was a bit more “computerized” and produced, and then Laff It Off … became a more live and improvised sound. There's a couple tracks on [Laff It Off] that were done in studio, like they didn't exist before; like that's just the take we used and that became the song. But, you know, even when we play it live now, it will be different. That was just a snapshot of what it was like at the time.
Reverie: Thank you for bringing up how closely Laff It Off and Enny One Wil Love You are intertwined. When you were, you know, on the cutting room floor, did you decide intentionally to group them sonically or by narrative?
Pascal: Enny One Wil Love You kind of kickstarted us getting into studio, writing new music, and out of that Laff It Off was sort of a joke song when we first like approached it! It was very kitschy and we had this chorus, but it also had a very over the top tale to it that's not even in there anymore. It was sort of a joke that the more we talked about it and played it, the more it became real. The decision to group the songs together came back after tracking and meditating and listening and seeing what was there because honestly we just had never done it like that before.
We started finding those connections and creating those links and leaning a bit on production for Enny One Wil Love You - we did a lot of vocal manipulation and hard tuning that was like a thread throughout that album, and that tied it together aesthetically. And then for Laff It Off… we went more for a moodier, underbelly of what [Enny One] would be. it's the same coin but as it flips right as you look at it, it has like two sides. So when we were listening to the mixes and the masters, I would listen to them one after the other and that was sort of what the project was.
And then we signed to [Paper Bag Records] and then for us it just made more sense. We wanted to release the music on vinyl and so we had to split them. We had to create a connected world that was also different… released one year apart. We felt like they were very much the same thing, but just looked at from a different vantage point.
Pony Girl at Big Winter Classic 2024 l Photo credit: Jess Arcand
Reverie: You have about five music videos that accompany this album, Laff It Off. Can you talk about the creative process behind making the music videos along with the songs?
Pascal: For the videos… [at first] everyone was like in pandemic mode, it pumped the brakes a bit for us. We were going to go on tour in 2020 and start rebooting the project, and then that was not possible. So a lot of our energy really went towards the visual side of things and that visual storytelling aspect… like let’s try to do something that feels right, lets pursue this letting go quality and lets collaborate. So we were able to make all those videos and those animated projects with a bunch of people, we were like 30 people total. Versus back in the day, it’s me behind the camera, let's go, you know, maybe ask a couple friends. So it was great - we only really worked on one video more technically like doing camera work, but otherwise, we were there on set and we helped with pre-production.
I had a really big list of ideas that I had been compiling over the years of music video ideas that I liked. Or little vignettes; for Age of Anxious, there's a lot of these random moments. Like, I'm singing with a netty pot! I have a notes file on my phone of just these ideas… like “Dracula in a tanning bed”. Perfect! I just don't think too much about it, it’s whatever image resonates with you at the time. We were looking inward and at the time we couldn't play any shows, so we're like, well what can we do? And what came out of it are all these videos, and that's sort of the universe that we create with those two albums. I'm really seeing the next record that we're working on conceptually; like what’s our cinematic universe? That’s what we’re interested in.
We're been playing a lot with different vocal delivery, trying to create different characters too. I guess that's what's fun about the pop container… I’m generalizing here, but you basically play a version of yourself or of a character. And so I think these two records open that door for us and it’s much more expansive than I thought. We're excited about what the possibilities are within that realm and hopefully we can pursue that expansion.
Reverie: How did you create this kind of cast of characters and, and these worlds?
Yolande: When me and Pascal were teenagers, we were actually huge fans of this singer called Jean Leloup. And his writing is all character almost, and every song tells a completely different story and it really builds a world. So I think when I see Pascal writing his lyrics, I definitely see that kind of influence maybe on a subconscious level. And I've also heard Pascal say, “I don't wanna write about myself ever”! *both laugh*
Pascal: It's really personal for everyone and wanting to challenge yourself, wanting to not do the same thing over and over again. The character exploration's really fun, I think everyone has these sort of multifaceted identities, whether they're in tune with them. Using that fiction angle, there's always some truth involved there. What's nice with fiction is that you can actually reach much, much deeper; you can actually get to the issue, where if you are really stuck in that nonfiction world, you kind of hit some boundaries pretty quickly, I think. That's what I've always appreciated, with genres like science fiction, you can talk about things that are extremely complex. There's like poly crises now where everything's interconnected and there's no neat, simple answer to fucking anything. I like that the character can let me say things that I don't necessarily believe in, because sometimes you think things and like, that's totally fine and they don't necessarily have to define you. I just like the freedom that it gives you.
Reverie: What's next for the cinematic universe of Pony Girl?
Yolande: Well, we are recording another album currently! We just did a bunch of work at Cadillac Studios in Victoria with our new producer named Austin Tufts of the band Braids. So we're building a whole new world! This time around I'm actually taking a lot of lead on the songs and we're gonna do a lot more trading off in a vocal sense. And I think we're exploring raunchier characters. Like Pascal, I can kind of see his cowboy David Byrne coming out a little bit!
A little bit of screaming, a little bit of just, ourselves… but wearing like crazy costume in a way, sonically speaking. We haven't really talked much about, what the cinematic universe is gonna look like from a music video standpoint, but I think you can expect maybe just some wacky shit. It's gonna be really fun.
Pascal: We have big flavors that we've been playing with! There’s still like some gentler and softer sides but a big part of this new recording is trying to find everyone's superpower and finding ways to highlight it. We've been trying to figure out how to communicate that by recording music. For example, in tracks we have like, ohh, freak out drums - we play with an amazing drummer, a jazz drummer, and live we're able to channel that and we create these moments where that can happen. There's gonna be more “in your face” stuff, but hopefully also just better direction of sound. So I think with this recording now, we're thinking a lot about what am I supposed to listen to right now? And trying to have as much fun as possible too, because that's kind of been the one thing that fuels this project: are we having fun? Yes? Okay, let's keep on going. and No? well, let's stop. That's really sort of our philosophy.
Yolande: I think today in our thirties - Pascal just had a baby - life is way busier than it was when we were in our twenties. And so if we're making music, we have to make sure that we're in it because we love it or else it's just too much work and we could be doing other things. We need to make sure that we are in love with the process every step of every step of the way.