The day has finally come. Baltimore art punkers Ponytail will be playing here in San Luis Obispo tonight at the SLO Art Center with Awesome Color and Skykillers. Their album, “Ice Cream Spiritual,” stayed at the top of the KCPR charts and over the summer cemented itself as a best album of the year for quite a few DJs. It’s no surprise. The album has more builds and climaxes in its running length than you will have in your entire sex life. It’s a pop album for people who don’t have the attention span for pop music. Lead singer Molly Siegel rarely forms words and “sings” in mostly grunts, yells and bellows as guitar licks and drum rhythyms change every couple seconds. Hot experimental bands like No Age and Health cram 10 punk songs into three minutes, but Ponytail crams 45 of them and a 32 oz. Rockstar into six minutes. It’s so frenetic and crazy that it is almost indescribable. So, instead of a real description, here is a rapid list of analogies that can closely approximate how sugared and sexed up, but still cute Poytail is:
Geoff Delano says listening to Ponytail’s newest album, “Ice Cream Spiritual,” is like sticking your man parts in a meat grinder, seasoning it with cayenne and lots of salt and LOVING it. Like licking 10 nine volt batteries at the same time. It’s like fist pumps before, during and after sex. It’s like watching a video of a hedgehog floating on it’s back while screaming “OMIGODSOOOCUTE!” the whole time.
Jack LaPorte said the album is like tickling your best girl in the basement of the Wham! City house party. It’s like playing freeze tag in a rainbow slinky knowing that when you are done, your mom will have lime Kool-Aid made and ready for your consumption to celebrate your victory. Like high school, only better. It’s like a horror movie that isn’t scary, has a toddler as the lead and in the end, everybody ditches school to go to a carnival. Like the time you went to Sea World and when they asked for a volunteer to ride Shamu and they actually picked you. Like a type of public sex exhibition in which no bodily fluids are involved and there is no post coital cleanup job.
Graham Culbertson said seeing them live is watching Dan Deacon make babies with the boys of No Age during a Sonic Youth/Dinosaur Jr. double bill. It’s like eating a Taco Bell Big Box meal with a huge Mountain Dew Code Red and slam dancing until you vomit. Every time you got drunk and fell in a bush times 10. Like watching a video of yourself coming out of the womb and just pressing rewind and fast forward for 30 minutes. Their album is like watching two people wake up to an alarm at 8 in the morning and start just going at it real hard, screaming out things that sound like words, and not keeping the same rhythm for more than ten seconds. When a singer yells out the only intelligible sentence “We’re gonna be late for school,” you can almost see them freeze before saying screw it and just going back at it until they are both a sweat-drenched mess.
If after those analogies you are still planning on not going, you might as well call up any boy or girl that you may be involved with and tell him or her that it’s over on account of you being no fun. After you are painfully alone, go about your daily routine emitting the foul stench of shame, scaring off any future partner that might come your way.
Ponytail (http:www.myspace.com/jreamteam) will play Thursday at 7 p.m at the SLO Art Center.