Pony Boy - Blue Gold (2015)

I became smitten with Pony Boy after hearing her EP back in 2014. Pony Boy’s real name is Marchelle Bradanini, and she plays music that feels destined for a True Detective season. If it isn’t a term already, twang-noir should be. And a picture of Bradanini should be next to it in the dictionary.

Out August 28th on the boutique imprint, Cosmic Thug Records – which Bradanini co-founded alongside Nashville producers, Adam Landry and Justin Collins. Here’s some more color on the album:

“The record is looking at California in the rear-view mirror,” explains the artist, real name Marchelle Bradanini, who currently splits time between Nashville and England. “Sometimes you gain perspective on a place when you leave it.”

This sense of flight and modern nomadism is manifested throughout Blue Gold and lends a sprawling feel to her tracks including lead single “Marquee Man,” a sultry satire about an actor with an ego that is so inflated; he’s a legend in his own mind and the ambling, guitar-kissed “Metal Dreams” the first track revealed from the album which premieres today via Black Book.

The breadth of her musical references on Blue Gold is dizzying: Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, PJ Harvey, Cass McCombs, Hank Williams, Daniel Johnston, the funk singer Betty Davis…. Still, great humanistic soul belies her feminist punk ethos. “I love the intimacy of singer-songwriter records, dimensions to your voice, people who don’t exist in a scene,” she says.