Pony Velveteen

Amidst the isolation of the past 2+ years, PONY’s Sam Bielanski and their partner Matty Morand transformed themselves into songwriting machines. Thanks in part to their pandemic podcast project, 2 Much TV, which challenged themselves to write a new song every single week, they wrote over 100 new original songs - finding inspiration from hours of television, books, and self reflection, and constantly sharpening their songwriting tools with every new melody. The result is the band’s second full-length studio album, Velveteen, featuring some of their most vulnerable to-date - 10 new stories about deep connection or longing for it, and embracing true authenticity, all wrapped in easily consumable pop hooks and infectious melodies. “For me I have learned that we become our most authentic selves when we allow ourselves to be open and deeply affected by someone else” says Bielanski, reflecting on the songwriting process that also corresponded with a 9 month-long struggle with insomnia that also inspired the album’s title. “I listened to an audio book of the velveteen rabbit every night until I fell asleep. I became obsessed with the story but I never listened all the way through. The way I eventually interpreted the story was that it's the love that we give and receive that makes us real or whole. The one chapter I found especially heart wrenching is when the velveteen rabbit is trying to hang with the real rabbits of the forest, and through comparison he realizes he isn’t as real as he thought he was. It was a good lesson for me even now because I'm constantly fighting the urge to compare myself to others. Your individual experiences make you who you are and nothing can change that. That's what I thought, until I finally listened to the entirety of the story and found out that at the end of the book a fairy turns the velveteen rabbit into an actual rabbit and then I got really confused.” The songwriting process for this record was different from any other time PONY had recorded music in the past. Bielanski was stuck inside, had a bad neighbor, and was forced to write music in absolute silence. “I made a lot of the demos for this record on garageband on my phone, often singing into my headphone mic inside the closet so as to not disturb anyone. Once I was happy with the songs Matty would add their contributions until we felt the songs were nearly done. It was amazing to see how much the songs would change every time a new person was added into the mix. It wasn’t until we recorded them with [recording engineer] Alex Gamble that the songs truly came to life for me. I guess Alex was the fairy who made Velveteen real.”