Album Review: Skating Polly Teach The World A “New Trick”
We have all had moments where we wanted to tel the world “Buzz off!”. Obviously, we want to use a more cavalier, “colorful” word in that mood, but the point is that Skating Polly’s new album, New Trick, feels like a three-track way of telling the world to “Buzz off!”. Kelli and Kurtis Mayo and Peyton Bighorse make their ways through the natural mood we all have at wanting tojump on a spaceship and leave earth for good. Deeming their brand of pop-punk, “Ugly Pop”, Skating Polly might be the band to turn to when you are feeling ugly in response to the world’s own ugliness, which, lately, has really been hard to look at.
Louder In Outer Space: the guitar melody of this track might as well be a bait-hook to your fishy blues. It has a post-punk flare that does well to elaborate the song’s theme of finding a “New Trick”, even if it is in outer space. Part lyrically fantastical and part emotionally wrought, Mayo has a voice that emanates a cool, “over it” attitude; like a woman who is willing to go intergalactic just to stop playing mind games.
Hail Mary: my favorite song! It plays to those old, quiet rock songs that were warnings of disparate youth. Every listener will zoom into Mary’s tale like it were written by a modern Shakespeare; you know the bad ending, but you pray for a better one. Again, the guitar melody shines as one to guide you through this dark, unholy tale, of which the light drum taps steam behind like fog in a dark alley; quietly creeping. You the listener trudge along praying your own “Hail Mary’s!”.
Black Sky: a perfect combo of pop and punk; this record feels like you are chewing on a stick of bubblegum filled with spikes. The guitar and drum arrangements sporadically cut through the rather tender, pensive vocals of Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse, who, mutually, have harmonizing voices that emanate the curiosity of pain. It is as if Black Sky embodies every time you looked at a scab, and recalled how it formed and became apart of your once smooth skin. For being a song about bad, tired relationships, this “scabby” aura is a good image of how the “wrong people” can stick to us like scabs that we either feel tempted to pick at or completely ignore.
All in all, for 12 minutes Skating Polly’s New Trick is worth every replay. Yes, this EP is ONLY TWELVE MINUTES! Yet, how could it not feel like an epically long, twist of sonic daggers when Skating Polly teamed up with Veruca Salt’s co-frontwomen Louise Post and Nina Gordon to write and record an incredible set of songs. Thus, Buy New Trick On April 28 and Learn More About Skating Polly By Clicking Here.
