PONY’s third album, Clearly Cursed, feels like a sunlit confession tucked inside a sugar-pop banger. At a glance — bright guitars, fizzing synths, and gleefully catchy choruses — it seems like classic indie power-pop fun. But beneath that gleam lies something messier and more human: self-doubt, betrayal, grief, and the art of turning pain into melody. The Toronto band built something here that’s equal parts catharsis and celebration.
The album’s backstory is almost too good to be true. Frontperson Sam Bielanski once visited a psychic who told them they carried a “dark spirit attachment” — for the right fee, it could be exorcised. Bielanski didn’t pay that fee, but the idea stuck. Clearly Cursed is, in a way, an attempt to make peace with that notion, to live with the shadows instead of running from them. And whether or not you believe in curses, the emotional honesty here is clear: blissful pop can hold bitterness.
