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New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you can’t have failed to notice that dancefloor punks New Young Pony Club are hotter than the sun following their infuriatingly catchy singles Ice Cream, Get Lucky and The Bomb. A blend of Talking Heads, Blondie and The Clash mixed with the sound of right now, the band are no retro wannabes, just unashamed of their musical heritage and want to party.
Fronted by Tahita Bulmer and co-songwriter Andy Spence on guitar and studio knob-twiddling, and backed up live by Sarah Jones on drums, Igor Volk on bass and Lou Hayter on keyboards, the band look as good as they sound.
Fantastic Playroom is their keenly-awaited first album, and the good news is that it's uniformly superb from start to finish. Hardcore fans will already have many of the tracks in the form of singles and b-sides, but for newbies wanting to find out what the fuss is about, buy this album, put it on your stereo and turn it up as loud as it will go.
The party starts with Get Lucky, an agogo-inflected slice of syncopated pop, with sexy, choppy guitars and a hands-in-the-air chorus. This is followed by Hiding On The Staircase which makes me think of Bow Wow Wow (in a good way) with its vaguely tribal feel.
Ice Cream is effortlessly cool, with Tahita's witty, sultry lyrics twisting and writhing around Andy's guitar and keyboard riffs. The Bomb is perhaps the album’s greatest track, and is worth buying Fantastic Playroom for alone. It has one of the most driving basslines I've heard since Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood or Waterfront by Simple Minds. It'll have you dancing around the bedroom shouting “Don't speak because your mind is amazing!” at the top of your lungs. I dare you not dance. I double dare you.
Jerk Me has Tahita imploring you to “Mark your sordid X on me” with the song’s herky-jerky rhythm. The Get Go has to be the band’s next single with its catchy bassline and guitar counterpoint. Tahita’s dreamy vocals blend perfectly with the song’s dancefloor pull.
Talking, Talking is the album’s one down-tempo track, but is still a head-nodder. While not as immediate as the dance-orientated tracks, its appeal crawls over you like black spiders pulling you deep underground. It manages to give the album a musical variety and depth that might otherwise be lacking.
Grey and Fan take the album into the home straight, the former an infectiously bouncy, catchy track, and the latter a mix of Talking Heads’ Remain In Light and Tom Tom Club influences. Fantastic Playroom wraps up with the wonderful Tight Fit, a bass-heavy toe-tapper.
The secret to New Young Pony Club's success is not their influences, but the songs. Stripped down melodies with no inch of fat on them which are frankly impossible not to hum. As Lily Allen was to last year, New Young Pony Club are to this, only much better looking, with better tunes and a much longer shelf life.
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