Our Club’s Cooler Than Your Club

New Young Pony Club guitarist/producer Andy Spence hardly has time to chill at home with friends, write movie scores or listen to music anymore, but he’s not complaining.

One would hardly pick New Young Pony Club – ice-cool English dance-poppers with impeccable dress sense – to be social misfits. But this sense of exclusion was partly the impetus for the group’s inception. Guitarist Andy Spence explains on the phone from home that the band’s name is about “saying to all those people that wouldn’t let us into their clubs: ‘fuck you, we’ve got our own club now and our club’s much cooler’.”

The amiable writer/producer is downplayed and modest on the phone, but on stage with band mates Tahita Bulmer [vocals], Sarah Jones [drums], Igor Volk [bass] and Lou Hayter [keyboards], they light an electro-pop fire! He says that’s the essence of NYPC: to dance the dance electric. “That’s what we’re about, you know, being a bit more energetic and exciting and dynamic… I think it’s a waste to create great music and not try and present it well. I enjoy seeing bands that make an effort and I think that’s the way it should be. You’re in a position there, you’re a focus if you’re making music, and if people like it… you should make an effort.”

They’ve certainly been making an effort, and it’s paying off. NYPC have been propelled into the all too familiar tour mill because of this. “That’s what we’ve done all summer and that’s what we’re doing for the next six months!” he says. It should see them in New Zealand around the New Year, perhaps even ready to showcase new material that he and Bulmer have “already started writing”.
“I mean I’ve only just come out [of tour], so you know, it hurts a little bit, I’m getting a little bit sick of it now,” he croaks. “Pony Club is kind of taking over at the moment, I hardly have time to even hang out at home or listen to music anymore, it’s crazy.”

Despite the demands of pony life, Spence keeps an ear to the ground. You can hear the smile in his voice as he recounts the Club’s inspirations. “The more recent kind of guitar bands that kind of push things forward a little bit”, was his unexpected response. And Franz Ferdinand: “They were really different to everyone else, I think that was an influence on our music.” Spence also credits “the DFA movement – the Rapture, LCD…” as influential for NYPC’s modern new wave.

The band is enjoying their whirlwind ride of success, but are wary of the trappings of fame. Spence cites pushy PR reps as detracting from the magic of musical discovery. “It’s great to see how things are taking off… but record labels get very excited, they try and push these bands on people. I think we always wanted people to discover us. It’d be nice if we had a bit more help from the radio over in UK here, but I think people eventually are finding us, and each time we do a live tour we do much bigger venues, so the numbers are swelling. And that’s fine you know, and it carries on like that, and I’m happy! But I’d rather let those fans find us organically and by their own means than having it shoved down their throat.”

Manufactured pop with no prefabricated jargon, NYPC is the real deal. They just happen to be of the extremely photogenic, unfazed-cool and stylish ilk of the Outsiders. Spence maintains they are not elitist though. “The thing about our club is that the rule of entry is that you have to be unique to be in the club. Most clubs are about conforming and being the same, but we want people to just be themselves and enjoy and dance and hangout, you know, sing, have fun. That’s the difference between our club and other people’s clubs.”

Harry Potter pwns Sailor Moon; Teacups pwn Jenny Lewis.

Two thirds of Teacups talk to a familiar faux-twin of their friend about their dainty music, crafts and fake facts.

Normally, nice girls shouldn’t go into dingy Queen St bars. But when said girls have a biting wit, astute class and endearing friendliness, they can withstand the stale beer smell and uncomfortable couples mingling bar-side, because places like these are often where they end up on a Friday night. Teacups are Auckland’s freshest new folk band to take quasi-residence in our often-lesser known, dingy establishments, but coming from the streets, these girls take everything with a grain of salt.

“We used to busk every Friday, that was pretty much all we did until we got that one gig!” laughs singer Chelsea Jade Metcalf, referring to the trio’s groundbreaking gig at Spiegletent, for the AK07 Craftwerk extravaganza.

Chelsea and Elizabeth Stokes [guitarist/singer] are school friends who would play outside the café where now third member Talita Setyady [double-bass/xylophone/singer] worked. “She’d make us soy hot chocolates!” grins Chelsea. The duo would busk in Botany, “up until the point where’d they’d set up a henna tattoo stall,” at which point they’d be “competing”. Talita says, laughing, “I gave them wasabi, I didn’t have any coins!” Chelsea: “She collects sauce packets! Wherever we go…” Talita: “Do not write that!!”

It’s easy to slip into lazy diatribe when writing from a roughly hour-long interview, which at times felt more like tea with friends than a discussion with an up-and-coming band. Not to blow the whistle too early, but Teacups are magnificently talented, nonchalantly covering Jenny Lewis’ entire Rabbit Fur Coat album so that they could swap their friend’s copy with their own cover version, much to the friend’s oblivion.

These craft-lovers are experimental in their approach to cutesy folklore, road tripping to buy an accordian, staging thematic shows and learning traditional Japanese chanting. “We’ve got a new song called Two Month Sleepover At Craig’s House,” Chelsea says. “And it just consists of Taiko drums, Liz on guitar, and a Japanese shout, cause Liz and I did a Taiko course – it’s a Japanese war drum, it’s awwwesome. Liz was so good she got asked to join the troupe!” They’re playing Craftwerk again on September 13, and they’re involved in various other creative activities as well. Talita plays in prog-jazz band Pink Fluffy Islands, and Chelsea won the wearable arts awards with her quilt-dress. “That day the theme was Indians!” Chelsea says.

Evidently the supermodel-esque band’s first interview, they are modest and endearing, softly spoken with self-professed faux-American accents, but uproariously funny and very giggly. The giggling is “derived from awkwardness,” Chelsea says. Commenting on the Watergate-ness of my taping our conversation, she says, “We should’ve brought a tape recorder too! We could’ve put it on our EP, it’d be the coolest!”

After Chelsea and Talita’s band-that-shall-not-be-named made it as far as the Rockquest national finals, they quit and began having their own band practice/nap clubs. But Chelsea says they got pretty lazy post-Spiegletent. “Our band practices were so bad, they were like ‘oh, do you wanna come over?’ and then we’d spend the whole night watching Youtube videos. One time we had band practice on a Sunday and fell asleep on my floor! [laughing] We slept there for like six hours; nap club.” Initially sticking to covers, they did Feist’s ‘Mushaboom’, The Bluebirds, and of course Jenny Lewis. “We played a medley,” Chelsea says, and hastily wrote an original, ‘Birds’, the night before the Spiegletent gig. Now they have many originals.

When asked about their song writing process they are increasingly modest. “There’s not a main songwriter, most of the time we write them together or someone will come up with the bare bones…sorry, I’m very bad at holding eye contact…” Chelsea stutters, looking away. The über Bear Cat/Harry Potter fans are driven by one thing –fun. “We’re just hanging out and laughing all the time,” Chelsea says. “I love it, sooo funny.” They’re three friends with a shared love. “Jenny Lewis. Why else do you think we sing in an accent?” Chelsea says. Adds Talita, “Yeah, the accent’s pretty intense; ‘we arrre country folk!’”

“Writing about music is like dancing to describe architecture.”

Bewildered Battles fan Sarah Gooding spoke to a bemused and delightful Ian Williams about the futility of music journalism, textures of sounds and a 12-girl screeching choir.

Some people just have it. Baffling intensity, easy humour and intelligent insight. Ian Williams, messianist multi-instrumentalist from the up and coming, fast-approaching New York band Battles, was the most enjoyable musician I’ve ever spoken to. Suitably modest but overachieving, Williams is amused by people’s attempts to describe his unique, experimental band. ‘Futuristic’ is one of the less cringe-worthy terms bandied about that he reluctantly accepts. “Why not? [But] I do think that it’s sort’ve a hokey word, like what are you, the fucking Jetsons or something?” he laughs. “Writing about music is like dancing to describe architecture, It’s sorta like how do you equate one to the other, you know? One thing can’t fit the other thing.” But one must persevere, because to share a band like Battles is to bestow the kind of greatness one only stumbles across a few times in their life. Like Oreo-shakes or a really great pair of togs.

And speaking of swimwear, Williams likens the band’s motives to wearing a tired old two-piece. “I think each record will be a response to whatever we’ve been through, so each record is sort of a process of where you’ve been and basically what’s the fresh new thing that you need in your life to make you happy, to get away from whatever’s been driving you crazy for the past year. So if through the past year I’ve been wearing a bikini on stage every night, probably at the end of the year I woulda been like, ‘I don’t wanna go anymore’! That’s one thing I’m gonna do, you know? So the answer to where we go is really simple.” Tan lines or bust.

Williams is a founding member of the experimental scene from which he springs. Charmingly excited about his current band, he says he saw vocalist Tyondai Braxton “beat boxing or something like that at a solo show and I was like ‘that’s crazy!’ cos he just does it through a guitar amp and it’s all kinda raw and weird, and I thought ‘oh that’d be great! I wanna play with him!’”
After gathering bassist/guitarist Dave Konopka and drummer John Stanier, the band then attempted to secure a 12-girl screeching choir, but feminist freak-outs caused the plan to go awry. But with their burgeoning popularity they just might revisit the idea. “Maybe now that more people know us we can get lots of good applicants and it’ll sizzle, it’ll be great… Girls who wanna do it should contact us, so we’ll have a 12-girl, New Zealand girl choir,” he laughs. Since this interviewer spoke to him, 11 places remain.

Williams’ verbose explanation of Battles’ vocal sound is almost an antithesis to their methodological recording process. “Putting the noises on the vocals kinda just helps blend it with the music more, so they don’t call as much attention to themselves. It sort of imbeds it a little more within the music so it’s just like another cog in that wheel… all the little parts add up to the larger whole.”

Their unique rhythmic constructions can also be credited to the guitar-tapping technique Williams developed during his early days. “In my old band Don Caballero I used to finger tap on the fret board a bunch… All of a sudden it opened up a whole new avenue of sounds, cos you could get like blending textures and harmonies and multiple sounds on the keyboard. So suddenly there’s a whole new world, it sorta connects you to the visceral element of like, a loud electric guitar, combined or blended with the colder aesthetic… I found it’s a new direction; it’s an impetus.”

But don’t dismiss their fragmented array of Echoplex loops and rhythms as mindless indulgence. “We don’t think of what we do as jamming, it’s all very twisted and tight… I don’t think we’re the kind of band that just sort of turns on a red light, smokes some pot and jams for two hours and just sees where it takes us, I wouldn’t say that’s us at all.”

That’s not to say they have no free reign on their songs live, either. “There are a few designated areas [for jamming]. It’s sorta like, you have a back yard, there’s the house and that’s sorta where you understand ‘okay, back there I’ll have a barbeque and that’s okay’. Otherwise it’s sorta like you have to have a barbeque in your living room, so we understand that, you know, there are little areas where it’s okay to do the jam.” There is a method to the madness.

Their “magic manipulation” on any of their recordings is baffling, Williams explains the very concept of recording as a “lie”. “The Beatles invented the four track recording process, and we’re not going back on that. There are a lot of tracks, a lot. With the magic of computers you can change all you want. We have a 16 track 2 inch tape machine, synched up with Protools, and there are tracks running on both, so. We have a lot of tracks,” he says. And they’re all incredible. Set sail with togs in tow, for Battles are on the horizon!

Working Class Hero

Thirty-two years and nine albums on, Ryan Adams, the prolific songwriter, musician and artist is still as passionate and curious as ever. But his guarded tone gives the impression he’s over the industry cavalcade.

Speaking warily and with a crafted ice-cool on the phone from his homeland, Adams seems to demand the same intelligence that emanates from his songs. He warms to questions of his various projects, philosophy and covers, and is even working on a novel – but remains tight-lipped about it.

“I don’t wanna give it away and should it never happen I don’t wanna build it up. It’s just something I work on here and there. I work on a lot of stuff; visual arts and writing, you know. I stay very plugged-in to the creative… I find it very healthy. I do paintings; I just got a painting on the cover of a Penguin Classics book, Dracula… I just got another painting on the cover of a magazine called Flaunt; I do a lot of visual art.”

Relentlessly creative, he is uninhibited by place or time. “I tour a lot, so when it’s time I kinda just write in just about any place you can imagine,” he drawls sleepily.
When asked if he plans to dabble again in his brief but fascinating i-foray into pseudonymous hip-hop, he says, “I suppose, if I’m bored! But I never did it in a way that I felt like it was ever serious anyway; it was just a funny thing to do, and something to, you know, laugh with and about.”

Though he is quick not to discredit the genre. “I take all music seriously! The songs that are funny to me are just as important as… I mean to make someone laugh is just as intense as to make someone feel sadness over life’s quandaries. They’re both valid, comedy is as important as, you know, rationalisation and or something that is more dire spiritually.”

His eloquent vocabulary a testament to a lifetime of artistic endeavours, Adams perpetually absorbs everything around him and turns it into gold. He muses about his inspirations; “It’s a kind of a fascinating world for me. So I just kind of follow what’s interesting to me at the time or maybe something that I find dramatic or real.”

I ask about the particularly drool-worthy cover of The Strokes’ Is This It, and why it is destined to remain under wraps. “Well the record already exists! I cover a lot of records when I’m bored, just messing around the house, you know. I never said that I would ever release it, I think I was talking to a journalist at the NME and he made a much bigger deal out of it than I did, I just had said that I’d had some dental surgery one week and I’d been sitting around learning albums on my banjo or mandolin, while I was on the couch trying to get over dental pain. And I’d mentioned that I’d actually learned those tunes for the first time, which was great because I’d wanted to understand the words more and the context of playing. Of course they’re very sensationalist, so their next headline was that I’d covered the entire record, and when would it come out. But it’s on a cassette tape made on four track and it’s in a duffel bag with about forty or fifty other cassette tapes I’ve made over ten years, so I mean I don’t even know how it’s labelled, but I know that it’s in there.”

Unperturbed and philosophical, Adams is a considered and fragile soul, despite his hardened demeanour. “The future has to happen first!” he exclaims when I ask what’s in the works for him. “I just follow the moment, you know? I just try to stay in the moment.”

Gold Soundz

Modest Auckland band Surf City snag a previous Pavement cover artist for their first release, change their name and amble down the path to success.

Kill Surf City was a popular live band, prolific in their infancy and gigging every other weekend; they quickly became a staple. Then, as things picked up for the slacker-rock inspired quartet, they set their sights further than the local dive and the obligatory name change beckoned. Drummer Logan Collins says it was an impending conflict they wanted to avoid.

“It’s one of those things where overseas there’s like three or four bands in the states and London [with the name Kill Surf City]. So I guess we just sorta had to do it now or… get in a whole lot of shit. So we just decided for the first EP we might as well do it now, and everyone was happy with it.” He laments, “It was stink because yeah, we did like that name.”

Dropping the ‘Kill’ was an obvious choice, as “just coming up with a name in the first place took us like six months, so to come up with a second name would’ve taken another six months. People probably think we’re a sixties cover pop band or something, but it’s alright,” he laughs.

Their peppy fusionist rock, with elements of the Clean, the Chills and Pavement burns with the sombre intensity of Animal Collective and the seasonal blitz of the Beach Boys; despite derivative qualities their delivery is faultless.

First single ‘Records of a Flagpole Skater’ also references the “usual indie shit”, but boasts a video. Shot by rising local underground film artist Sam Muirhead and featuring eccentric actor Stuart Devenie fawning over model trains, it portrays the band as miniature ‘guess-who’ cutouts, riding atop trains at 5am.

“It came out totally different to what we thought and he did a fuckin’ real good job on it,” Collins says.

‘Records…’ is on the self titled EP, with five other songs old and new. Their first release on Arch Hill and under the new name, it’s also their first release ever. Collins says, “we’re pretty stoked.”

Mastered by local pop prodigy Murray Fisher [of Goodshirt], it “was done over quite a long time, pretty much everywhere. We only used two mics… apart from one song; Jamie and Davin just sorta figured things out. A lot of our songs are quite old, so took quite a few goes to get right. We’d recorded a few of the songs before but they were pretty… they were just kind of shit, pretty much. But we figured it out and got it right!”

Nonchalance will get you everywhere. The band that appears to care so little about people’s perceptions has recently pulled a manager, a label and an internationally acclaimed artist for their first release.

“Oh that’s a pretty good story,” Logan says amusedly. “It [was done by] a guy called Steve Keene, a New York artist. He’s done albums like Pavement Wowee Zowee, Blondie, Dave Matthews Band and stuff like that. Davin just emailed him and was like ‘Dude, do you wanna do our cover art?’ and he sent back going ‘Yep sweet, what are some ideas?’ and we just said ‘chickens… with guns’. Then he painted like twelve original paintings and sent them over and we just chose! He didn’t charge us a cent, so that was pretty cool.”

Currently rehearsing for their upcoming dates as well as a support slot for Battles, the band hope to tour Australia later this year, funds permitting. “Until anything’s finalised or on paper it’s all up in the air,” Logan says. But fortunately the only direction Surf City seems to be going is up.

There's a lion in the road, there's a demon escaped.

With many impending dates and their third album out now, Grand Prix is racing ahead.

Ditching the racing helmets and trumpet in favour of a boys' choir and percussion, Grand Prix is shedding previous pigeonholes 'tex-mex' and 'mariachi', in favour of a more accessible alt-country/indie sound. But it's not that simple. Vocalist and guitarist Andrew McKenzie says "It's been hard to talk about it [the new album Terraplane Twilight] in the interviews that we have done because we're not quite sure ourselves about what references we should be using or not, you know?"

Over-conceptualisation of their old attire and the fact that it "wasn't actually very good for hearing what was going on," the band have abandoned their quirky look and instead embrace a quirkier sound. Fearing that "anyone thought it was sort of gimmicky; we didn't want that to shoot ourselves in the foot", they now don suits and ties and flaunt a "recorder of death".

But Grand Prix's image has matured along with their sound. Recruiting friends Luke Buda, Age Pryor and Craig Terris for the Grand Prix Boys Choir featured on the Roy Orbison ode 'A Moment In Time', was easy, McKenzie says, and adds to the diverse nature of the album.
"Age Pryor's got a room next to Brett [recorder/producer of Terraplane Twilight] in the studio village where he works, and Craig Terris, he's always around everywhere, and Brett just asked Luke Buda if he could do some as well. So it was very easy, cos everyone sort of knows eachother. All the la la la's at the end, that's all those guys. You can't really distinguish all the different voices, they've been all mixed in together to sound big."

The cavernous Car Club hall where the band recorded over nine months, could be attributed to the album's atmosphere. Add to that harmonica, glockenspiel and Farfisa organ and you have a majestic yet disparate collection of songs. The recording of 'The Devil' was plagued by vexing technical difficulties that were then exaggerated for dramatic effect in the album's press release, but this is quickly downplayed by McKenzie.

"That was just slightly weird, but I think it might've become something to use as a line, sort of thing. I mean it was a pretty bizarre night that night, but I don't think it was that big a deal... [We had] temperamental gear as well, preamps just sort of turning on and off and doing weird things. Although, it's an old hall, maybe it's haunted! Who knows. It's certainly a weird place to be if you're by yourself."

It hasn't been particularly easy riding for the racing-themed band. McKenzie speaks frustratedly of funding difficulties, the repeated pushing-back of the album release date, and journalists pigeon-holing the band.

"Those ['mariachi' and 'Tex-Mex'] are the references with the last album, and that was mainly because of the trumpet stuff, and that was definitley a mariachi type of influence. But I think that might have put some people off listening to it before they'd even heard it, because I think maybe some people hear the word 'mariachi' and think 'oh, it's probably not my cup of tea'."

Burying their humour in lyrics and doing away with the obvious, the band remain positive and quite unlike any other local act. They aim to tour the South Island and Australia later this year.

Eat to the Beat

Pig Out make self-proclaimed 'strange dance music', but this doesn't stop them from getting indie kids to dance again.

“You don’t have to be a nerd to appreciate Pig Out,” MC/rhythm programmer Kit Lawrence says. The acid house, minimalist techno band’s energising spontaneity, baffling originality and all-inclusive party style, stamps out any preconceived notions of pretension in the club genre.

Joyously ardent Lawrence is refreshingly upbeat and excited about the band’s impending trip overseas to play the MIDI festival in France.
“Some guy in Paris was into us and recommended us to them, and it really blew me away because there’s only like four bands playing there per day, and everyone who’s playing is kind of like the best in their field, like Animal Collective. I’m just really flattered and humbled to be playing. I only just realised the other day how incredible it is, so I’m really psyched.”

Noted for their ability to transform Chicago acid-house and Detroit techno into a modern synthesis, Pig Out is progressive and Lawrence is adamant about this.
“We have been listening to this stuff for a very long time, but also we feel like we’re adding something to it; we wouldn’t be doing it if we were just repeating what someone else had done.”

Pig Out’s strengths lie in their ethos of fun and experimentation in creating a lively atmosphere, where indie kids and seasoned clubbers can all get along and smear leaking glow sticks on each other. Though for their upcoming final New Zealand tour for 2007, they ask us to leave the glow sticks at home.
“Me and Marie [synth/programming] are old enough to remember going to raves or after-parties or clubs, and glow sticks just represented everything dodgy about that kind of thing. But I think it’s really nice the way kids who go and see bands like Klaxons and stuff all have glowing bracelets.”

Further unpredictable is their penchant for less obvious pairings, such as old favourite tour-buddies Cut Off Your Hands.
“We got on really well and they really loved our music and we really loved their music. I’d love to tour with them again, because they were just really great guys and I could listen to that music over and over, every night.”

There remains a refreshing openness and honesty about the band. They have fun but also take it seriously.
“The thing that separates us from a lot of bands is that we’re not gimmicky at all, it’s just about music and so we really don’t feel the need to be in matching suits or that kind of thing, because where we’re coming from is just really raw music. What we’re doing hasn’t really been done before, you know?”

Citing tentative booking agent interest and touring opportunities, they look forward to getting a new bass player in London.
“We’ve got a lot of friends over there… it'll be quite nice to have another English kid in the band.” They plan to re-embrace their nomadic roots.
“We really don’t feel particularly that we belong anywhere, and the nice thing is that we’re quite happy just to roam about, and playing club music you can pretty much go anywhere.”

Rightfully excited about the band’s future, it’s relieving to hear that Lawrence is a fan of Auckland and wants to come back, as Pig Out will leave a gaping hole in our local club scene while they are gone conquering foreign dance floors. Eat your heart out, Europe!