New Wax
Brooklyn's Paul Megna, aka The Oxygen Ponies, is back with a brand new album entitled Harmony Handgrenade. In case you missed my previous write-up on Megna: he was shot in the neck by a sniper in Hell's Kitchen in 1994, was taught how to play guitar by Jeff Buckley after his recovery, and played the lead role in a play about Kurt Cobain. The bullet from the shooting is still lodged in Megna's neck only centimeters from his jugular vein. You can't make this shit up. Whereas Megna's excellent self-titled 2006 album The Oxygen Ponies was mostly built on sparse arrangements and intensely personal lyrics, Harmony Handgrenade is more ambitious both sonically and thematically. The new material finds Megna reaching beyond the personal realm of his debut album and visiting more politically fueled subject matter. Songs like "Fevered Cyclone" operate on multiple levels with lines like "I'm sick and tired of fighting/ Lay down your weapons with me/ Don't be struck by the bullet you're biting/ Don't you want to live in peace" serving as a representation of that duality. Much of these songs cleverly work on two levels: as relationship songs and as political songs. In comparison to the Oxygen Ponies debut, Harmony Handgrenade is a lot less bedroom folk and a lot more 90's indie rock album. Sure, there are still acoustic guitars on the album, but the instrumentation is much fuller and arrangements call for backup vocalists, strings, and horns. With Harmony Handgrenade, the raspy-voiced Menga veers away from the lo-fi goodness of his previous album and offers a new approach. The good news is it's just as impressive. -- Capt. Obvious
Listen:
MP3: The Oxygen Ponies - Fevered Cyclone
MP3: The Oxygen Ponies - Grab Yr Gun
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