Pony Express Record

Shuddering to think about a world where the 1001 album list was made by some late GenX American dude obsessed with early 90s alt and grunge instead of our British author obsessed with late 70s / early 80s post punk

I started out hating this and it grew on me somewhat. There are some catchy melodies, and on a certain kind of day I can understand how the hard driving instrumentation would hit the spot. But the vocals never stopped being annoying, and I don't think it justifies its length (not enough variation here despite the high track number count). Also look up the dude who sings he has A WEIRD FUCKING HEAD.

This looks like it might be industrial? metal? hard EDM? odd mix of bleak imagery with fun ponies around the edge. Ok, it turned out to be alt-rock/post-hardcore. A few interesting moments but they were always brief... and it went for an hour. Post-hardcore albums have no business going for an hour, truly. Lot of odd dissonance, out-of-place wailing, forced extreme dynamics etc. Nothing out of the ordinary for this genre, but I can't say I'm a fan. My overall trajectory with this album was weird: at first I hated it, then I started to get into it, then it went for so long I started to re-dislike it. I think it's an overall 2/5.

A very interesting album with almost Tool-esque prog-metal grooves and angular post-hardcore guitars, alongside some of the wildest vocal melodies I’ve ever heard but also some huge grungy choruses - like Alice In Chains meets self-titled-era Deftones but also nothing really like either of those bands. The opening song was so aggressively discordant in a truly unique way - the vocals never sounded ‘out of tune’, they were clearly meticulously planned to create as much tension against the instrumental as possible. It was like an alien had listened to a handful of 90s alt-rock albums and confidently spat out vocal lines with no concept of how they ‘should’ progress or resolve - but it worked and added to the dark and isolating tone of the album

Never heard of this band or LP before, and from the get-go I appreciated the heavier guitar and grungy hard rock feel. There were a few progressions that evoked some Kyuss/QotSA vibes, which is a big plus in my book as the original list was definitely lacking in heavier rock albums. The main weaknesses here are the vocals (which were passable at best, annoying at worst) and the runtime – cut 10-15 minutes off this thing and it would feel like an effective gut punch, not tje mildly repetitive love tap it currently is.

90s psych really was quite something. The alternative tunings here feel very Sonic Youthy, but maybe with a harder punk edge. Angular and arachnoid and arch and other pretentious words that start with A. Also nice to remember that there were American 90s bands who weren't bloody Nirvana.

Pretty cool on this originally, as it settled into a kind of vocal/music patter I thought was pretty monotonous. It grew on me though and I'll give it points for blatant wierdness and smarter than average (for musical on the hardcore spectrum) lyrics. The Atlanta Rhythm Section cover was kind of my favorite part though.

Great post-hardcore album showing the "poppy" side of Shudder To Think. Performance of band, vocalist and production are excellent.

Never heard of. Fucking awesome. I'm gonna place it somewhere between Soundgarden and Slint. Many thanks nominator. I'm loving this list more than the original list.!

In the vast, overwhelming majority of cases where the artist says "I want this to sound like nothing and nobody else", the resultant mess ends sounding like everybody else's effort at sounding unique. Music has rules - or at least guidelines - to follow, because if one doesn't, you get something that isn't really music. Fortunately, Shudder to Think paw at the boundaries rather than flat out ignoring them, so this album is at least listenable. It is quite nice to hear what people suggest.

One of the first albums on the fan list that I had not heard but genuinely liked. It’s very weird and very 1990s

Som mathrocky goodness, it's not always palatable, but today i happen to be in the mood for it!

Looking at what was ahead of me with this album I was hoping I would absolutely adore it, but thinking it's pretty good is still a plus, I'd say.

Musically this was pretty great, but I actively dislike the vocals. I also have a limited tolerance for the nonsensical lyrics. Fave Songs: So Into You, Hit Liquor, Own Me

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: X-French tee shirt

These are long songs. At least they sound like long songs. Didn't really get any vibes that this had anything special. Didn't really do much for me.

Fine I guess

Pretty good

Surprisingly, not too bad

Never heard these guys before, but I quite like it. I’ll listen to it again.

Pretty nice.

Not sure what to make of this, enjoyed parts, found the vocals a bit irritating. If it came out in 00’s would be a straight 2 stars, but feels this is a bit more impactful being 90’s. So 3 stars interesting enough to merit giving it a chance. Who knows might grow on me.

Perhaps a little too much dissonance for me. I didn't hate it though

Alternative rock, noise rock. Muy de los 90's. Escuchable, sin más.

On paper this should appeal to me, I’m a GenXer into rock, punk, post hardcore but this just doesn’t quite land right for me. It has some good parts but the whole feels lacking. I will re listen but my hopes aren’t high

Quite a quirky punkish jazzish record.

Initially, I was going to rate this a 2. I think the vocals can be fairly grating, however, I noticed more interesting songs/song elements as the album played on. No Rm. 9 Kentucky is a pretty cool track. Chakka's not bad either. It's clear that they were experimenting and trying to push their sound. I'll certainly take something imperfect and interesting or unique versus a sound that's bland and inoffensive. I think I was expecting something more like Stone Temple Pilots or Toadies but I had to recalibrate for a sound more like Faith No More's.

An amalgamation of the most annoying elements of 90s alternative rock and grunge. Rating: 1.5 Playlist track: X-French Tee Shirt Date listened: 07/01/25

Nah

Just not my thing. 2 stars.

It is a very interesting mix of music and interpretation, with ups and downs in rhythm, contrasting the melancholic atmosphere of the song with a progression that rises with the drums and bass, however in its summary it did not convince me enough.

Post-hardcore, math rock, alternative rock, noise rock, glam rock, art rock. Rollo. Un 2.

Interesting alternative album, kind of felt like some others we have heard but I had it on in the background and only skipped a few.

This was shambolic in a way that made it difficult to connect to. Not for me.

For the most part this was pretty average. A hardcore rock album with some flair but a little dated in itself overall. For the 90s there was significantly stronger hard rock albums to come out. Not faulting this being anyone’s favorite but there is better options in its own genre. 5.1/10

Not particularly interesting or special. Alt rock with a decent edge to it, but the vocal delivery is mostly annoying, and nothing with enough of a hook to warrant coming back to.

They distilled my least favorite aspects of 90s rock into one album.

This album restored balance in the world because after liking an avant garde post rock jazz album I get this post hardcore bullshit that I don’t like at all.

Nothing on this was bad... But equally, I cannot remember a single thing that stuck in my head 12 hours later.

Sounds like a cross between The Dismemberment Plan and Deftones. Drags on like a motherfucker by the end and kind of ruins the well knit-together first half of the album by falling into pretty generic alt rock territory (basically everything after "X-French Tee Shirt"). No issue with Post-Hardcore, in fact please inject that shit directly into my bloodstream, just kinda thought this was pretty unremarkable all things considered. Strong 2/5.

Did not like this. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't a pleasant listen. From the start just wasn't my vibe. My personal rating: 2/5 My rating relative to the list: 2.5/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Gross.

Weird? Sure. Interesting? No. Really grated from the start. Enjoyed it most when it went the most bass forward. But mostly I found it tedious and offputting.

Pony Express Record is more pony than anything else. It's loud, which is fine, but it's mostly a complete mess of structures, annoying vocals and bad lyrics, overly long longs and overall runtime, and a frustrating lack of direction and coherence. It's not outright offensive enough to get a 1 but I didn't enjoy this even though on the face of it I should've at least found something appealing in it. 2/5.

Prog-grunge is not a genre that appeals to me. Not a lot for me to enjoy here.

Early post hardcore is very different from modern post hardcore. And this vocalist is on a completely different page then the rest of the band. It's kind of ridiculous actually.

Pretty forgettable to me.

Anti-melodic and oddly structured at times, especially at the start. Feels a bit like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were forced together without concern for whether they actually could be connected, but if you were to to the take the time to rearrange the pieces, there’s a cohesive image that could be formed. That said, it gets better and starts to make more sense as it goes on.

Post-hardcore, math rock, alternative rock, noise rock, glam rock, art rock. Rollo. Un 2.

This ended up not being as bad as I thought it would be after when I was two songs in. It belongs in another era and the band is not nearly good enough to pull of the weird ideas they come up with. There were a few highlights along the way, but I wouldn’t explore their discography further unless I really had to.

An interesting take for sure, but this should have probably just stayed in the 90s along with heaps of other alt rock albums.

This is the second post hardcore album that I’ve gotten this week and I can’t say that I’m impressed so far. The vocals aren’t great and the music doesn’t seem to follow any direction and has zero cohesion. Sounds just like a jumble of instruments, all playing different songs.

Fuck it. I have tried to listen to this album so many times without reviewing it, and I lose interest in it almost immediately every time. I don't think it's horrible or anything, but this album is not for me to the extent that I think I might be developing an allergy to it 2/5

Far greater acts are casting a long shadow over this album, which was Shudder To Think's first LP released by a major label -- right in that couple of years in the nineties where everyone in the music business was looking for the next Nirvana... I might admit that *Pony Express Record* has been underrated to a degree, sure. But not to the point where it could join the restrictive club of the 1001 most essential albums of all times. Not with the obvious flaws in it, and not when it comes off as so derivative of all those greater things occuring at the start of this particular decade. Ascribing those long shadows to their different owners might help up understand what *Pony Express Record* is all about. You can for instance sense the influence of Faith No More or Alice In Chains for the vocal performance, filled with all sorts of mannerisms -- ones sometimes going to interesting places, and other times missing the mark in quite a spectacular fashion. Let's just face it, those meandering vocals are almost unbearable in the last leg of this record, as they go from one pointless performative dirge to the next. A genius like Jeff Buckley could sure go beyond that personal impression of mine and spot brillance in said performative shtick (Buckley would even collaborate with the band on a song written for a soundtrack some years down the line...). The thing is, whether Craig Wedren's supposed brillance actually fits with the instrumentation or not in this record is still a matter of debate today. At least for me. On paper, I really wish the man's glam-rock-inspired, anti-macho shtick could work out fine over the post-hardcore canvas performed by the whole band, because it would yield to a promising and totally original rock style. And for a couple of highlights such as "X-French Tee Shirt", well, Wedren's vocal performance *does* work (how nice does his vocal line sound, here circling around that obsessive one-note hook carrying the bulk of said single!). Yet for the vast majority of the other songs, Wedren's voice seems untethered to the music, and it even sticks out like a sore thumb in a couple of tracks. There, those vocals are either too tame or they suddenly go to an overkill mode that's close to grating. The fault might also lie in how Wedren wrote those vocal melodies on his own compositions, I don't know for sure... But whatever the case may be, it's hard for me to grasp his real intents at times. Another long shadow to piece out here is related to the instrumentation and compositional work displayed throughout *Pony Express Record*. This is where drummer Adam Wade's remarks in that wikipedia soundbite up there can offer you pivotal clues, by the way... You can indeed smell some "grunge", "heavy" whiffs coming from Soundgarden's music in those songs, sure... But the longest shadow is cast by Fugazi, of course -- which is only natural for a Washington D.C. post-hardcore band, who were originally part of the Dischord label roster to boot. There are so many Fugazi-inspired flavors I immediately recognize in this LP, whether in those guitars alternating between seductive melodies and uncompromising dissonance, or in the distinct groove of the rhythm section (Shudder To Think had toured with Ian MacKaye, Picciotto, Lally and Canty, so *of course* they were in the first rows to learn their lesson). And the production of Ted Niceley, who also recorded the early Fugazi albums, naturally enhances those flavors. Yet as hard as I tried to focus on the music, the genius spark found in *13 Songs* and *Repeater* is still missing for me. What you have here is a very close rendition of it, but you don't have the sheer intensity exemplified in the records I've just quoted. A quick sidenote: Fugazi knew better than to accept the offers made by major labels around the time this Shudder To Think album came out. They always politely but firmly refused those, because they knew it would kill their hard-earned artistic (and financial) independance. On that subject, you need to read Picciotto's hilarious account of how Atlantic Records' Ahmet Ertegung once had the band literally "cornered" to make them an "offer they couldn't refuse". Jawbox and Shudder To Think actually said yes to those sorts of offers, which led them to a very different path... It's a contextual tidbit that can help explain why some users still remember *Pony Express Record* today, even if it didn't make waves that were that big. Signing to a major label had some short-term perks, like having your music videos on rotation on MTV, for instance... The other reason I'm alluding to those events is because Shudder To Think, now unsigned to any major label, has just very recently gone back to the Dischord roster to release two very nice songs ("Thirst Walk" and "Playback"). Honestly, those two songs are worth your time whether you enjoyed *Pony Express Record* or not. The current band sounds darn good, even after all these years, and in a sense I consider the current execution of their usual aesthetics far more convincing today than for this 1994 album. Not to say that Shudder To Think might suddenly become "relevant" now. But who cares about that, really? If the music's good, the music's good, right? To return to *Pony Express Record*, my personal opinion of that choice for the users list is that it's a very odd one for three reasons... First, as stated in my tentative "review" up there, the music on this album isn't stellar overall. This is only my subjective assessment, of course, and more power to you if Shudder To Think ticks all your boxes. In and of itself, it was a nice idea to make other users of this generator discover this band. But I fear that said discovery won't make a lot of people turn to their heel and reconsider everything they know about rock music during the nineties... Secondly, 1994 was one of the most extraordinary years for music ever, and there's still a dozen of great albums from that year ignored by either the original list or the one curated by the generator's users. Those take precedence for me, and with such a great number of omitted albums, I just can't take today's suggestion seriously. If you only consider heavy rock or indie-rock genres that are quite adjacent to *Pony Express Record* among those ignored jewels, you have Jawbox's *For Your Own Special Sweetheart*, Superchunk's *Foolish*, Kyuss' *Welcome To Sky Valley*, Sebadoh's *Bakesale*, Helmet's *Betty* and Shellac's *At Action Park*. If you broaden the scope to other strands of rock music, you also have gems recorded by Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Silver Jews, Beck (actually two of them!), NOFX, Liz Phair, The Magnetic Fields and Low. And if you broaden the scope *even further*, to other genres, there are still pivotal LPs released by Aphex Twin, Tortoise, Kristin Hersh, Gravediggaz or Joni Mitchell in that year to take into account... Finally, Fugazi's *In On The Kill Taker* came out in 1993 -- one year before this Shudder To Think major label debut. The legendary D.C. band then released *Red Medicine* in 1995 -- one year after said major label debut Given that the aesthetics of *Pony Express Record* shares some distinct DNA with those two other LPs -- once again unfairly omitted in both the original and the users' list -- I just can't help comparing it to them. And the outcome is unambiguous for me. Compared to Fugazi (which you can unarguably consider as mentors for that budding post-hardcore scene at the time), Shudder To Think doesn't stand a chance. Yeah, sure, MacKaye and Picciotto's vocals will sound more extreme and less mellifluous for neophytes in that genre. But given how weird and sinuous Wedren's own vocal performance comes off, I'm not even sure Fugazi's vocals would be less accessible for today's ears, all things considered. Sorry for the very long rant. I really tried to enjoy this record, but I couldn't. And I had to explain why as honestly as I could. To put it in a nutshell, I can't be part of the "Pony Express" team, mostly because I'm already part of the "Birthday Pony" team, you see. If you know, you know... 🤷 2/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 64 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 82 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 154 (including this one) ---- Emile... Je viens de lire ta dernière réponse. Je vais essayer de trouver le temps de rédiger la mienne pendant la période des fêtes. D'ici-là... Noyeux Joël !!! Et Onne Bannée !!!

👎🏻

I found this so annoying.

Waste of time, sorry. Not into this one. Keeping one song for posterity but this was mostly skips.

Naw man 1

If a low lying headache was an album. This was painful and in no way enjoyable.

One of those moments where, halfway through the first song, you shake your head in disappointment and mutter, "Fuck you."

I guess grunge lasted long enough that someone tried to get proggy with it. It's not a good match, this was a chore.

It’s honking weird; that’s what it is. I can appreciate the novel musical structures and the unique lyricism and singing but I just can’t get my head around its iconoclastic take on rock. I’m not likely to want a re-visit.

Who listened to every album on this list then thought....ya know what this list was missing....more obscure shitty indie/alt rock from the 90's..... Favorite songs: Earthquakes Come Home Least favorite songs: the entire album 1/5

I do not need this melodic hardcore music.