New Young Pony Club
Where ‘da party at? On the dance floor and in the studio, says lead vocalist Tahita Bulmer
By Sheba White
Published: September 20th, 2007 | 2:39pm
There’s a party going on behind Tahita Bulmer while she speaks to me. The din in the London hotel lobby where she stands would drown out most voices, but this rocknroll frontwoman is fully in her element. A self-professed “travel junkie” and primary vocalist of the electro-pop, house-raising quintet New Young Pony Club (with Andy Spence, Lou Hayter, Igor Volk, and Sarah Jones), the background cacophony doesn’t seem to faze her. In fact, Bulmer’s measured voice rises and falls to the percussive ministrations in an uncanny imitation of the new wave punk–tinged songs on the band’s Modular release Fantastic Playroom (released August 28, 2007).
Onstage, the 34-year-old vocalist comes across as the supreme partier in all her disco-panted and partial shave–headed glory. Off stage (and a mere week before Fantastic Playroom hits American shores), Bulmer is not gobbling high-energy protein bars or waking up to a nest of video screens looping callisthenic montages, as one would suspect. “I have bits of me that are very energetic and bits of me that are very sleepy,” says Bulmer in her characteristic English lisp. “I keep the sleepy side of me — waffling around in my slippers and my dressing gown — at home.”
Home for now is London, a place Bulmer lived for part of her life. The other part she spent in stopovers between countries. A borderland kid á la M.I.A., she grew up listening to socca, soul, Motown, reggae, and R&B but along the way picked up a love for borderland music groups — from 2 Live Crew and Public Enemy to the Sonics and the Stooges. “I was quite an angry teenager, so I liked angry music, but not necessarily the stuff everyone was listening to,” Bulmer says. “I always much preferred the old stuff. It seemed that they were actually talking about something real. Whereas the newer bands seemed to be minding about the fact that they weren’t able to drive their daddy’s car, or that they couldn’t get some girl to go out with them, or some crap like that. It just seemed really banal to me.”
Several times throughout the conversation, Bulmer touches upon this concept of what’s real. It’s particularly on her mind right now, she explains, because fame has arrived in the NYPC camp and has been invited inside with its requisite nonsense entourage. To note, the commercial success of “Ice Cream” — a song initially released on an EP in 2006 and subsequently picked up by Intel to advertise its dual chip processors — suddenly found the band with a record contract and slots opening up for the Gossip.
It’s good news by all accords. But then, Bulmer says, there’s the stuff that follows: fighting a conservative radio atmosphere in hooked-on-Britney England, struggling with the inevitable cynicism of the music biz, and decreasing opportunities to actually practice as a band. It’s not that she doesn’t welcome success, Bulmer says. It’s just that it usually signals the beginning of a long struggle for a new band.
“Our manifesto is just to be who we are, have fun, and try to enjoy the process of creativity, in as much as being an artist in any way is amazing,” Bulmer says. “Especially if you’ve had a life where you’ve done such shitty, shitty jobs — where you spent eight hours wishing your life away, obviously doing something like this is amazing.”
At the same time, she says, if you make music every day, it can become mundane and repetitive. “It’s important for an artist to remember where they’ve come from in every situation, even when you’re on a bus for 12 hours or having to do things when you’re really tired. It’s basically to have fun, to enjoy ourselves, and to remember how lucky we are. It sounds quite earnest, but when you meet people who have been doing this any length of time, you do get a sense of ‘Oh I’ve seen it all before and it’s quite boring.’ We don’t want to be like that.”
For now Bulmer’s main goal is to stay focused on her music and not become a one-dimensional characterization of one of the many “very spiky, racy” party ladies dotting the musical landscape right now. In effect, she’s keeping the party in the music and on the dance floor.
The band aims to keep its feet on the ground. “We try to make music as much as we can and not get blown up too massively by people around going, ‘Oh, it’s all great, blah, blah, blah,’” she says. “We know it’s a job like any other in some ways, and you have to work hard. The main aspect of being a musician is making music. When you’re in the mood to just play silly buggers, you kind of have to get over yourself, and get in the studio, and have some fun in there.”
Issue #18
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