New Trick (feat. Louise Post & Nina Gordon)

Album review

Indie rock duo Skating Polly emerged in 2009 when members Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse were just 9 and 16 years old. The two Oklahoma City stepsisters found an early champion in punk icon Exene Cervenka (X) who agreed to produce their second album, 2013's Lost Wonderfuls. Appealingly minimalist, and owing a great debt to '90s alt-rock and the riot grrrl movement in particular, Mayo and Bighorse continued to draw rabid new fans over subsequent releases like 2014's Fuzz Steilacoom and 2016's The Big Fit, eventually adding a third family member to the mix in Kelli's brother Kurtis Mayo. Seemingly out of the blue, the newly minted trio were invited to collaborate with another pair of admirers in Nina Gordon and Louise Post, frontwomen of '90s alt-poppers Veruca Salt, an admitted influence of Skating Polly's. The fruits of their combined labors arrived in early 2017 in the form of New Trick, a three-song EP produced in Los Angeles by Brad Wood (Sunny Day Real Estate, Liz Phair). A complementary match on paper, the collaboration yielded strong results in the studio as well, with Gordon and Post's strong melodic sense and layered harmonies pairing well with Skating Polly's dark fuzz pop. The remarkably hooky "Louder In Outer Space" is the obvious standout, but the slower, brooding "Hail Mary" builds to a surprisingly complex crescendo. The final cut, "Black Sky," falls somewhere in the middle with a warmly layered chorus over its bare-bones arrangement. No longer up-and-comers, Skating Polly have come into their own with yet another strong release.

© Timothy Monger /TiVo