The Singles Jukebox

Who needs metaphors when you can offer the real thing?

[Video][Website]
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Pete Baran: “Pontoon” is both a card game and a kind of jetty, but this isn’t the subsection of country about gambling. Nope — this is a daytime party song, an odd subsection of summer jam. It declares its purpose and goes about its business of evoking the kind of day which by its very nature should be inconsequential.
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Katherine St Asaph: There’s an organ in the distance, and reverb soaking almost-diffident vocals (diffident for female chart-country singers, that is); I’m hearing, of all things, a sprightly Cowboy Junkies song. The guitar solo’s lost on some lazy river, but at least the mandolin stayed put.
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Anthony Easton: I thought this was a Xerox of their last hit, but that was five years ago, and “Boondocks” had a darkness and a brave face hiding desperation. This has the same musical sophistication (the four-part harmonies, the bell clarity of the guitar), and some of the lyrics are nice (the double entendre of “motorboat,” the allegorical nature of the line about rocking the boat), but it works too hard to be effortless.
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Iain Mew: The extent to which the song almost entirely gently amuses whilst actively discouraging thought or feeling is a conceptual triumph. 
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Alfred Soto: A “party in slow motion” is exactly what this trifle sounds like: too well-behaved for Toby Keith and his red solo cups.
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Patrick St. Michel: “Reach your hand down into the cooler/don’t drink it if the mountains aren’t blue.” Look, I get that the bills have to get paid, but why can’t we draw the line at cold-activated bottles?
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Jonathan Bogart: Is my mind just extra dirty, am I addled by rock & roll (same thing right), or is there some lecherous suggestion to the way Karen Fairchild’s voice caresses the single word of the title, something that “motorboatin'” goes out of its way to underline?
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Brad Shoup: All around the mammocentrism is a sundown country jam, slathered with reverb and the insouciant delivery of a Sheryl Crow. The recurring mandolin riff is wicked; if this song weren’t pitched at the lake, I’d half-expect this to be a Southern strip-club joint. Long story short: I don’t want to miss out on the next “Sweet City Woman.”
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Will Adams: I already have my summer anthem picked out, but thanks for the offer. Here are some tips for next time: try having a different rhythm track (one that isn’t so listless), reconsider intoning “partying” in a Rebecca Black inflection, and don’t drown your vocals in delay and reverb. Your video looks really fun, though!
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