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Imagine, for a second, the trendiest party you were never invited to. You know – the ones that the pouting fashion students with razor-sharp fringes at university used to talk about while you solemnly tucked into your snakebite n' black. It's probably in a squat somewhere in East London, with someone doing 'challenging' performance art in the corner and Pete Doherty mainlining smack in the bathroom. Now – see that band playing to a vast, swaying audience of scenesters at the far end of the room? That's New Young Pony Club, that is.
The London-based band, fresh from a tour with CSS and Klaxons, are the hippest thing on the block since, well, the last bunch of well-dressed electro misfits – they couldn't be more 'now' if they'd been incubated in test tubes by the Klaxons until last week. It probably doesn't hurt their cause that they all look like they've stepped straight out of a Vogue shoot, but their winning combination of ice-cold sauciness and dirty 80's synths certainly makes you feel exactly 67 per cent cooler when you have it blaring through your earphones on a packed commuter train.
Singer Tahita has that disinterested-but-sassy Kate Jackson vocal delivery that drives indie boys wild with unrequited lust and girls green with trendy-envy. Crucially, though, NYPC's dance-influenced songs suit her voice better and are (and I'll probably get beaten around the chops with a pink Converse for saying this) stronger than much of the work on the Long Blondes' debut, 'Someone to Drive You Home'. Single 'Ice Cream' with the knee-trembling lyrics about "I can give you what you want/ I can be the sauce you crave/ Come on and dip your dipper", is utterly indicative of the album's deeply salacious funk – eminently danceable and utterly, utterly filthy.
They can also do Blondie-esque choppy guitar numbers – Tahita channels the spirit of Debbie Harry's 'Heart of Glass' on the absolutely ace 'The Bomb' – set to blast a hole in any packed indie night this summer. This and 'The Get Go' – a minimalist bass-heavy stomper – are about as new-wave as you can get without squeezing into ill-fitting suits and jerking about the dancefloor in a variety of 'edgy' poses.
Certainly, there are enough knowing nods to the tail end of the punk scene here to make you feel as if, well, there's not a lot of innovation in the Pony Club. No bad thing, but opener 'Get Lucky' sounds so much like a lost Talking Heads masterpiece there's even a line about a "Psycho killer" thrown in, in case you didn't get the hint. And while we're on the subject of ironic statements, it can't of slipped past their obviously-salivating marketing department that their website address – wearepony.com – is essentially advertising to the world, or at least the cockernee-rhyming-slang-understanding ones, that the band are 'crap'.
It's not all good news. The album starts to tail off towards the end – Tahita apparently running out of ideas on 'Grey', singing about…erm… it not being her favourite colour over a pretty lackadaisical drum machine beat, and 'Fan' is a simply terrible three and a half minute dirge, with the singer seemingly giving up after all that premium naughtiness at the beginning of the record. There is enough good work here, however, to make up for the band taking their eye off the ball somewhat. NYPC, it seems, have the style and the substance.
