I HEART NYPC

London punk pop five piece the New Young Pony Club are the darlings of the taste maker crowd. Allister Hayman meets them to find out what all the fuss is about.

"RAVE is quite complex. We're not sure we can do some of the grooves. I think Talking Heads style grooves are a lot easier."

Andy Spence, guitarist of disco punk act The New Young Pony Club, laughs off suggestions his band is part of a "Nu-Rave" scene. In Australia for the first time, Andy and lead-singer Tahita Bulmer are struggling to shake off jet lag. They sip tea, apologize for being grumpy, and proceed to talk over each other like old friends.

"The NME are only playing with about three genres at the moment and it all seems a bit arbitrary," Tahita says of the so-called Nu-Rave scene. "But they're just trying to encapsulate a movement where people are writing music that's influenced by dance music."

Andy and Tahita, or Ty, both from London, came together three years ago after discovering a shared enthusiasm for DFA, The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem. "We wanted to make something strong, bold and colourful," Ty says. "And we just started experimenting with different sounds."

Both have played in bands since their early teens and cite a plethora of influences, but mainly late seventies post-punk. "But we're not a po-faced kind of band," Andy says. "We can get down to Madonna as much as any post-punk band. We like to have fun with it."

Together the duo is the creative force behind the London-based five-piece. "Essentially I record all the instruments - mostly on my own in the studio first," Andy explains. "I'll create the music then Ty will come in and work on the vocals and we'll shape it together. When we're happy with it, we take it to the band and it evolves again."

The band, Igor Folk – on bass; Lou Hayter– on keyboard; and Sarah Jones on drums, along with Ty and Andy, have been playing together for two years. After releasing a couple of seductive tracks on a minor imprint and impressing with the energy of their live show, they signed to Modular Recordings last year. "We wanted a relatively independent label that also had some muscle behind it," Ty says. "We wanted the best of both worlds and that seemed to be what Modular was."

NYPC released an eponymous EP last year, which included the provocative hit Ice Cream, and now with the release of their debut album – likely to be one of the best of 2007 – the band is set to break through.

"When we play live most people seem to know about three or four songs so it's going to be great to get the album out there," Andy says. "It's taken a while but that's the nature of the business."
Despite the increasing attention, the band has kept a low profile, maintaining only a Myspace site, which Andy says has been deliberate. "Sometimes it's cool to have less information. In this know everything age, it's nice to just make it about the music…"

"Which is exactly as it should be," Ty says, capping Andy's sentence.

But with her Egyptian heritage, comb over mo-hawk and edgy fashion – not to mention her purring punkish vocals, Ty's now in danger of becoming a style icon. "We're in times when bands want to dress up," she says of NYPC's fashion. "I mean if you're going to go out in your fucking pyjamas then half the audience are going to be dressing better then you."

But this does not mean trading on her looks. "I've never liked that idea that women in this industry have to flirt to get where they want to go. You have to play the 'I don't know anything, protect me and mold me,' kind of game and I've always tried to avoid that."

"What she's talking about," Andy interjects, "is Girl Power."

"No! It's not girl power," Ty laughs. "That's all about punching the air and wearing large boots and being silly. I resent that. It's about saying you will speak to me as an equal and not force me to trade on some kind of psychosexual level. It's about being a proactive feminine force, which is what Ice Cream is all about."

Behind their seductive pop veneer NYPC, with their jerky angular rhythms and uncompromising attitude, have a sharp punk sensibility. "If we're disco punk then we're more disco on the record and more punk live," Ty concludes, sipping her tea. "I think that's the best way of putting it."

A version of this article first appeared in OYSTER magazine Photo: Kane Skennar