Call the genre whatever you want: indie rock, medium‐fi, punk or dirty pop. Regardless, Extra Medium Pony is going to give you the feels. With braided themes of isolation, depression, introversion and self‐consciousness, the Cleveland‐based band circles around songwriter Rick Spitalsky, who solely wrote and recorded the forthcoming album, Meaninglessness, due out in September 2016. He also played all the instruments and crafted the artwork himself. The LP will be released via E xit Stencil Recordings, who also put out 1 1868, the project’s debut album that dropped in February of 2013 in the US and in March 2013 on Japanese label, Waterslide Records, who handled the European distribution.
Meaninglessness is a 12‐track, lyric‐driven and perception‐bending LP based on observations from Spitalsky’s life, where he spends most of his time making music, hanging out with his two puggles, avoiding reality at the movie theatre and over‐analyzing awkward situations. Once the blur of the day has passed, that’s when Spitalsky gets to become Extra Medium Pony. He likes to geek out with his friends about gear, recording techniques and their shared love of music from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Current musical influences include Built to Spill, The Rentals, Ben Gibbard and Kleenex Girl Wonder.
The forthcoming sophomore record follows in path of 1 1868 ‐ the debut album named after Spitalsky’s old residence, where he met and eventually lived with his former girlfriend/bandmate ‐ that Cleveland.com hails as a “quintessential summer break‐up record, all bubbly melodies and buoyant guitars. But the sunny delivery is tempered by the rainy‐day lyricism. It's a conceit used by artists from the Beatles to Elliott Smith and it works here thanks to Spitalsky's disciplined distillation of each idea into its own two‐minute cathartic blast.” The LP had Cleveland Scene raving about “ ramshackle ballads that adopt the lo‐fi approach that acts like Sebadoh and Pavement heartily embraced,” later adding in references to The Pixies and mention of Spitalsky’s prominent past, calling him “ a veteran who has played with Dreadful Yawns, Nicholas Megalis, Afternoon Naps and Herzog.”
