Pony Girl "Highways" release

If you don’t wanna be working every day, or believe in nothing, or feel like a wannabe, sometimes all you can do is Laff It Off. Pony Girl’s sophomore album for Paper Bag Records casts the warm light of golden hour onto their artpop, guiding characters who are floating towards hope.

Praised for their “alluring” music “lush with synths, sax and sultry vocals” (Brooklyn Vegan), “emotive and expressive” songs (CBC Radio), and “gorgeous… modern-rock tapestry” (Ottawa Citizen), Pony Girl will awe you with Laff It Off, their most optimistic statement yet.

Laff It Off urges you to let go, a playful departure from the shade of its sister album Enny One Wil Love You. Its spirited title track chants “I don’t wanna be working every day” over and over, rejecting labour and floating on with the tentative smile of those yellow happy face balloons. Playful fingerpicking gives way to surging synths for an opener as catchy as it is cathartic. You’re in Pony Girl’s world now.

From stage fright to sex work, Pascal Huot and Yolande Laroche craft a world of personas with honey-rich voices and a moving desire to persevere. “Highways” softly bends with the fragility of new love, “Wannabe” croons that we’re all performing onstage and off, and “I Believe In Nothing” releases us from darkness with careening guitars, distortion, and pure freedom. 

Pony Girl is a kaleidoscope of pop unlike any other, turning everyday life into mesmerizing melodies, rock and electronic production. In true indie fashion, the Ottawa-Hull collective self-released their first two records (Show Me Your Fears in 2013, and Foreign Life in 2015) before signing with Paper Bag Records to unveil Enny One Wil Love You in 2022.

Laff It Off will take to the skies this fall. Should you find your shoes are made of stone, this album is the very push you need to move forward. Rest in its glow.