Pitchfork

Baltimore's Ponytail look like they'd tip the scales, collectively, at around 385 pounds. So the racket they make is loud and dense but not beefy. There's no bass, fer instance, but the two guitars do play low notes sometimes. And they also look like their collective age is somewhere around 60, which sounds old until you realize there's four of 'em. So their music definitely sounds like kids at summer camp, kids on the wrong side of four pitchers of bug juice. The best way I can think of to describe it is "a ruckus."

People might compare Ponytail to Deerhoof-- indeed, some already have-- but I'm not really the one to debate the comparison's accuracy. And maybe it's just the weird gloss of digital production, but what they're doing sounds pretty damn original to me. The band's guitars are so bright and trebly that they make me think of colors before, like, notes and melodies and stuff: hot pinks, baby blues, neon greens, traffic cone orange. Guitarists Ken Seeno and Dustin Wong like speedy one-note runs (ADD kids tapping their pencils against their desks), big surf rock arpeggios played on three-dollar plastic axes, and strangely pretty sweeps of prickly nylon-stringed strums.

These Toys "R" Us tunings are used for tiny, tinny pop-punk timebombs. Ponytail know that art rock is almost always better in double-time. So the ne-ner-ne-ner-ne-ner riffs cruise along with the fuck-safety-helmets glee of kids doing BMX tricks as the drums clatter behind them. Occasionally the joy of making this noise gets to be too much for the 'Tail and they collapse into giggles, smashed cymbals, unison roars, and rainbow feedback. And then they right themselves and rev almost immediately back into action.

All of which would just be so much treble-kicking fun if not for Ponytail's secret weapon, vocalist Molly Sigel. Her cries, coos, shrieks, growls, and a full array of preverbal (or is it post-verbal?) noises take Kleenex's scatty nonsense and the Raincoats wordless longing and suck all the meaning out. Live, it's almost a shock when Sigel's tiny frame begins shaking violently as she throws a temper tantrum and reclaims Cookie Monster voices from death metal kids. On Kamehameha she's more or less adrift in the swirl of glossy guitar plunks and zings, rather than the band's focal point, though this might be a recording issue. Still, there's really no other rock vocalist like her right now.

Ponytail's debut is one of the few things keeping me feeling young right now. It's all aimless, nervous, sugar-shocker energy, delivered in easy-to-swallow form in less than 30 minutes. When the music blog Idolator recently posted one of the band's songs, a grouch beefed in the comments box that they didn't have, like, a point. To which I'd say: if p-p-p-pure energy isn't reason enough for a rock band to exist, check your pulse and/or your stated reasons for liking music (or being alive) in the first place.