Consumer Guide Album

Ponytail: Ice Cream Spiritual! [We Are Free, 2008]
Statistics, statistics. DIY debut: 10 songs, 27 minutes. Yeasayer-financed follow-up: eight songs in 34 minutes. So even excluding the 7:00-exactly "Celebrate the Body Electric (It Came From an Angel)," means track length here is up 32 seconds. The sound is bigger too, strengthening a band that's all guitars-drums-vocals sonics--including Molly Siegel's yelping vocables, without which the sound's faux-tween soul and wise-ass tempo shifts would evanesce into abstraction. But down in the basement, prog is building a playhouse. And if the band catches on the way it deserves, that hideout will start looking like a castle. A-