Plenty of bands try to capture a sense of fun on their records, but listeners would be hard-pressed to find one that captures the creative joy of picking up an instrument and plugging it into something loud better than Ponytail’s Ice Cream Spiritual. Though the album deserves praise for this reason alone, the quality of music that results from this undeniable good time makes Spiritual a success beyond its bottled jubilation.

Like Deerhoof on speed, the band plays spastic, form-shifting art-punk with seemingly no idea where anything is going until it gets there. Throughout the album, Ken Seeno and Dustin Wong’s guitars perform a blisteringly intricate mating dance, leading the rest of the band through a maze of distractions and tangents. The whole thing is held together by vocalist Molly Siegal, who grunts, trills, moans, shrieks and generally makes every vocal noise imaginable other than singing.

Ice Cream Spiritual’s lack of order can be off-putting, but its ecstatic mood ultimately wins out. The album is almost as much fun to listen to as it must have been to make.