clearly at most of the paint

Look, I’m sorry, but this needs to be done. Someone has got to put their foot down. I will gladly take whatever flak you throw at me for this blog/review, because every word about to spurt forth is solidly true. The band Ponytail is effing awful…and that is being generous. Lemme try again: atrocious? unbearable? pointless? an abomination?

All true, but still hardly capturing the true essence of their astonishing disregaurd for people’s ears. The scene of the crime was at the Los Campesinos show at the TLA (see review). The opening band AND Los Campesinos (whom we interviewed) were utterly BEAMING about their joy to have Ponytail on their bill, practically gushing about how they have been looking forward to them for ages.

That simple fact almost hurts more than how much they truly and oh so thoroughly sucked. Two lovely bands, brimming with talent, and solid songwriting, genuinely patting borderline morons on the back for a job well done, seriously impressed with the steaming pile of aural crap they produce. That’s like Sean Penn talking up the acting talents, and spewing adulation for Paris Hilton…damn near offensive.

So while we’re on the subject of offensive, allow me to expand on what this beautiful concoction of a set they played sounded like. They walk out on the stage looking every bit the over the top version of cliche hipster, and I secretly wished down deep that they didn’t sound how they looked. As usual, wishes never come true. The dual guitarists were no doubt talented, even used some really interesting effects…however anytime the riff seemed catchy, or perhaps that the song was going to come together and begin making sense, they would destroy any semblince of sounding even remotely listenable, and eraticate the glimmer in your eye that they were talented with a barrage of pointless white noise and spatterings of out of time thrashes. It’s as if they could sense that the song was about to get good, and in an all out call to arms to be too goddamn hip, and o-so-avant garde, they put a bullet between the eyes of listenability. Now for the cherry atop this delicious sundae: the “vocals”. During their soundcheck (which to be perfectly honest I’m not sure when it ended and a song began), the singer made annoying weird yelps into the mic, in what seemed like a common move to check/test levels. The thing is, unbeknownst to us….this was her singing, the “lyrics” if you will. Dolphin sounds is actually a pretty spot on way to describe it, or you know that akward period when babies start to learn how to talk, but are only kinda mumbling annoying sounds that vaguely resemble words? Like that, but not cute coming from adults getting paid to call it creative, or art. Not a single real word was uttered for 40 min-ish (sans one or 2 silly, or baffling stage banter comments, “we have peace more songs” for example). One guitarist even threwg in some, I want to say background vocals, but birds being tortured is far more accurate. The sounds didn’t even change! The lead singer (sorry, I refuse to learn their names) had an arsenal of roughly 6 noises, that she shuffled around, and used in every damn song. EVERY SONG! SAME SOUNDS!

I wish I could say that maybe their particular musical experience relies more on the energy or stage show, but they are largely uneventful to look at, much like the music, 2 moves in the bag of tricks, and never leave home without it. So I declare Pitchfork, you are clearly waaaaayyyyy too drunk with power if white noise that occasionally sounds like a real song with a mutant toddler-dolphin yelping overtop is what you are passing off as the best new music. Thanks for getting my hopes up jerks, why can’t you just be pretentious with a conscious?

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