Dustin Wong

Dustin Wong’s rock band Ponytail was assembled by decree, as part of an assigned art-school project in which classmates became band mates by a professor’s random grouping. Miraculously, the resulting mishmash sounded like a real band, albeit a pretty strange one. On 2008’s more-developed sophomore record, Ice Cream Spiritual, Wong’s complicated but ecstatically racing guitar leads merged playfully with Jeremy Hyman’s ferocious drumming (good enough to get him a subsequent call up to The Boredoms) and singer Molly Siegel’s totally bonkers, animalistic shrieking. Kismet might have convinced the band of the luck inherent in good band chemistry, but disparate interests seem to pull them in differing directions. Wong announced last year that a set Ponytail was playing for their local scene’s Whartscape Festival in Baltimore would likely be their last. They've backed off that a bit since, recently releasing the fine album Do Whatever You Want All of the Time, a title that’s got them covered no matter what trajectory they end up taking.

As it turns out, what Wong wanted to do when off Ponytail duty was play a bunch more complicated guitar parts. Last fall, he released Infinite Love, a double-disc set of instrumental suites built on electric guitar and effects pedals, with a pinch of programmed drums. Its cover illustration depicted Wong seated in a semi-circle of linked guitar pedals, surrounded by differing shapes and colors that hung in the air, an image that evoked the shifting patterns and live loops of his solo shows. Without an eyeball magnet like Siegel out front, Wong’s technical prowess and experimental flights of fancy are the lure. And while the result may not be as pogo-friendly as his previous act, the directions his music now takes are fully self-determined—whims, sprung from a single source.  —Jeff Klingman