Run For Your Life (Self-released, 2014)

This five-song EP from the Los Angeles-based quintet The Show Ponies is a mix of bluegrass, swing, folk and rock delivered with touches of dark humor. The title track is a folk rocker that compares the hazards encountered in earlier times ("Our ancestors ran from predators and their enemies wielding arrows") to the challenges of modern life ("I've seldom had to run to preserve my own existence/Ain't it sad to lose your breath after only a short distance").

"Get Me While I'm Young" is an amusing girl/boy duet that has Andi Carder's demands ("So come with silver, come with gold/Don't come when you want/Just come when you're told") being met with resistance by Clayton Chaney ("It seems that someone washed your brain/With a shiny, sparkling ad campaign/Distorting the purpose of your life"). Carder's lead vocals are also nicely featured on the jazzy "Stupid," which is reminiscent of the Hot Club of Cowtown, and the opening up-tempo bluegrass tune "Honey, Dog and Home."

The band's more serious side is on display in the effectively somber folk ballad "Some Lonesome Tune" that finds Chaney contemplating suicide ("That silver handled sharpened knife/How did that thought get in my mind?") only to reconsider ("But all my blood could prove/Is my weakness and my need to be made new").

With strong compositions and solid performances this EP, clocking in at just under 18 minutes, is an entertaining, though brief, project.