Pit Pony – The Present
A present in both senses, gift and tense, and Pit Pony’s new single leans on each. Jackie Purver starts with a gift left for an old friend, unsure how it’ll land, then spends the song owning her part: the criticism she can’t swallow, a friend still sizing her up against an older version of her, the struggle to be glad for someone without sulking about it. By the last verse it opens out to a whole circle of friends moving through each other’s lives, joined like an umbilical cord, which she names with the old Greek word for the navel. Fitting, given the band recorded it late last summer with Purver seven months pregnant.
Chris McManus recorded and produced it at Blank Studios, Katie Tavini mastered it, and next to July’s Thunder (W28) it’s softer and wider, with more room around Purver’s voice and the Newcastle accent she’s never sanded down. Gentler than “Thunder”, and the honesty cuts deeper for it.
