Ponytail

Ponytail

Guest Playlist: Ponytail’s breezy springtime tunes

Ponytail: Do Whatever You Want All the TimePonytail: Do Whatever You Want All the Time (We Are Free, 4/12/11)

Ponytail: “Easy Peasy”

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After a brief hiatus in 2010, Baltimore art-rock band Ponytail released its third album, Do Whatever You Want All the Time, on longtime record label We Are Free. Its psychedelic artwork, created by Yamantaka Eye of Japanese rock band Boredoms, is matched by the band’s manic vocals and guitar-driven melodies.

In honor of the changing seasons, Ponytail guitarist Ken Seeno shows the band’s more chilled-out side with this ultra laid-back playlist.

A Warm Spring Breeze Blowing Through My Window
by Ken Seeno of Ponytail

1. The Revolutionaries: “Leftist”

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A deep, smooth, bouncy groove made by the masters of Channel One. All sway and smiles. Today is a good day.

Thank You

Record Review: Thank You’s Golden Worry

Thank You: Golden WorryThank You: Golden Worry (Thrill Jockey, 1/25/11)

Thank You: “1-2-3 Bad”

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Thank You‘s third album, Golden Worry, proves that the Baltimore trio is a band worth rooting for, and one that’s a step closer to making clear what it wants.

Like a few other recent albums to come out of Baltimore — namely, Pontytail‘s Ice Cream Spiritual and Dan Deacon‘s Bromst — Golden Worry stages a good-faith meeting between experimental impulses and an enthusiasm for amiable hooks. This hasn’t always been the case with Thank You. On the band’s last album, Terrible Two, its obsession with rhythm threatened to dry up the guitars, keys, and vocals into a tuneless murk.

Thank You has a compact feel that sometimes works for it and sometimes against it. The drums clamber actively on top of the song, often taking the lead but not always filling up the low end, and the guitars work up a noise-rhythm complement that, while often aggressive, doesn’t pursue a lot of fun back-and-forth with the percussion. As for vocals, only sometimes there and only sometimes coherent, they’re another constant variable in an open-ended format. It might help to know that Thrill Jockey’s bio for Thank You credits each member simply with “everything.”