Ponytail is a band from Baltimore, Maryland with an enthusiasm that is soo Brooklynite but hey, it lacks the pretention of a true Brooklynite, it is real as cream and Molly Sieger does the whipping. With the jolly frolic of poppy love and drum beats and cries reminiscent of native American tribes, you are sure to have Molly beat herself and the crowd into a forceful trance. This trance is as intuitive as spiritual and self induced but never seemingly fake always apparently authentic. It is luring to hear their pop cheese melt into Americana influence, and elevated above the common ground by a smashing coup de poesie.

Ponytail played as the closing act at the Bell House in Park Slope on January 23, with Pattern Is Movement and These Are Powers opening. Hearing Ponytail it is hard to capture the vocals alone as they are the carves in the harmonies, the sharp dents in audible surface, but Ponytail is Ponytail, an intellectual loss and a separate form of fancy only and solely because of Molly Siegel. Her vocals are dadaist ramblings of the vocal chords evoking Hugo Ball, creating a surrealist landscape of sound to trip on. In poetry such influence is not original nor authentic, but in the space of Ponytail it transcends the foregone mass into an elevation of a new musical sphere. What makes Ponytail particularly American is strangely enough the influence of Dustin Wong’s guitar play. I easily recognize in non-American musicians a keener ear for sounds of Americana funk, blues or pop, as cultural icons which to Americans would quickly be blase or kitsch. So you want your own stuff? Your own rhythm and words, and consonants and vowels too? Molly Siegel lets the vowels fool around.

These are Powers is an easy listening band that displays more pretention on the stage than they live up to. Their recordings are not bad actually and more interesting, but their live appearance is terribly weak. Making edgy pop really only works on a stage if you’re fucked up, not if you have the charisma of wimpy spoiled college students. There’s always those who argue you can’t judge a show on their appearance, but it’s show business first and foremost, and These Are Powers lack all force of conviction. Pattern is Movement is less pretentious in appearance and a little more endearing for that reason alone. I didn’t think their mix of melodic musical pop operas quite cut it, and got boring half way by lack of variation. A pity cause their appearance is fully unconventional and could carry more weight around. But in the end, as a pre-show to Ponytail, it really doesn’t matter what you hear before, it adds to the unique event of the evening, and it doesn’t matter what I say about it, and if you missed it, you couldn’t really escape it.

Links:
Pontytail MySpace
We Are Free - records
Molly Siegel
Dustin Wong - guitar
Jeremy Hyman
These are Powers
Pattern is Movement
The Bell House, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY
Dada Manifesto (1916)
Talking Heads - I Zimbra (1979) - Youtube