Ponytail - Do Whatever You Want All the Time (2011, We Are Free)

RIYL = Boredoms, Gang Gang Dance, Battles

Some reasons I like Ponytail are that, like the horsebutt hairstyle they’ve identified themselves by, they are wondrous childlike with energy beams out their collective foreheads (you can steer the unicorn beam by means of ponytail-as-handle). That and the lickity-splitness of their guitars, Molly Siegel‘s girly yell-yell, the gentle, bright-eyed sparkle of it all -- it’s the Baltimore that we all believe in. Do Whatever You Want All the Time takes the dirt-eating, elementary madness of their earlier efforts and sets it in the restraints of junior high school: pimpled to the heavens, still with mass-energies (vending machines for lunch), hormonal, but feigning something like maturity. The brightness of punk in the hands of these Ponytail-ers is glitter and teeth and rocks and summer at nighttime with the windows down, Fun Dip and a denim vest (with a Black Flag patch). The cover overwhelms, but the music only goes so far as to charm madly. Majorly crushing on this album.

Ponytail 'Easy Peasy'

Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual

Ponytail
Ice Cream Spiritual
(06.2008, WE ARE FREE)
Verdict = a blazingly delicious rock spiritual, indeed!

Before listening to Ice Cream Spiritual I was given a little preface/warning from a friend that I shouldn’t expect to hear anything substantial from the vocals apart from high pitched female screams. The air of the comment had me worried about the vocals, kind of expecting that I would have to get used to them or get over them or something. Now, this isn’t a particularly literate album or one with catchy pop sing-a-longs, but that doesn’t mean that vocal excursions on Ice Cream Spiritual are the novelty I was lead to believe. On lead vocals Molly Siegel uses her voice the same way Brian Chippendale does in Lightning Bolt or Eye does with Boredoms - which is to say, she uses is it as another ecstatic instrument among the heaps of guitar, bass and drum ballistics on the record. So, if you hear something awry about the vocals, pay it no mind because Ponytail is simply a wondrous bunch of ballistic punk rock pranksters. The band is really all about exercising demons and after listening to Ice Cream Spiritual I’m convinced that the band manages a Gold’s Gym somewhere in the lower levels of hell ‘cause this stuff is nuts. I love it quite honestly. This stuff is simply rocking to the most rockingest extent. Full on blessed out jams teetering on explosion but retaining just enough control to be easily and enjoyably deciphered and translated to all out boneless, Gumby-style dance freak-outs. Musically, I want to pin them somewhere between Deerhoof and OOIOO, which, if I might say so myself, is pretty good company to be leveled against. Seems I can’t do much more but compare musicians to other musicians nowadays, but rest assured, Ponytail’s Ice Cream Spiritual is worth every second you lend to it.

-Mr. Thistle

Ponytail - "Celebrate the Body Electric"