It's not often you see a young band regress over the course of their early records, but that is what Chicago quartet the Ponys appear to be doing. The logical progression is from wearing your influences on your sleeve, to gradually assimilating them into a sound that is recognisably your own. The Ponys' third album sounds like it could be their first - either that, or they think they have made, retrospectively, some kind of Sergeant Pepper of 90s alt-rock, or weird karaoke for people with short memories.

Second song Let's Kill Ourselves really does sound like the 90s - in fact, a dead ringer for Enjoying Myself by the band the 1990s. Since their debut album is only just out, it is more likely to be a case of musical magpies pillaging the same sources rather than actual plagiarism, but the similarity is uncanny. Third song I Wanna Fuck You (no, the titles aren't particularly auspicious) is pretty much Dinosaur Jr's cover of the Cure's Just Like Heaven, with a little Pavement thrown in. Another reaches further back to early Echo and the Bunnymen - at least until the shrieking starts; another further still to the Who. Then it is back to the 1990s (the band), Galaxie 500 (albeit on steroids) and, most impressively, a song constructed around a bass riff that is similar to the middle eight of Kitchens of Distinction's 1992 single, Four Men. For this especially, points are awarded both for taste and wilful obscurity, if not originality.

The 90s timewarp is intensified by singer Jered Gummere's grungy bellow, and flannel shirt. None of this is to say that the Ponys' pastiche is not lovingly or well executed, but pastiche is absolutely what it is, and nothing more.