Cambridge’s The Pony Collaboration release their first single, ‘The Fast Lane’, from their self-titled debut that was released back in April. Despite what you may hear about the eight-piece collective’s brain-liquefying musicianship skills and a scene comparison that paints them as a slightly older Los Campesinos!, ‘The Fast Lane’ sounds like an impromptu (I take that back, it sounds extremely premeditated) preschool music-lesson crash.

Full of spongy instrumental arrangements, including a viola, melodica, glockenspiel, and synths, ‘The Fast Lane’ quickly turns into the quite slower lane, with safe and sound pop-standard strings pulling along at a snail’s pace beside some even more standard, but anchoring, acoustic guitar strumming and dreary, sing-along–song, co-ed vocals. It’s all about love and loss and the coming of terms with blah blah blah, but it’s all terribly unconvincing and a poor choice for a first single.

Let this be a lesson to you: always be suspicious of bands with ‘pony’ in their name.