Aloud recently had a lovely little chat with New Young Pony Club’s frontwoman Tahita Bulmer - while she was buying thermal underwear in M&S! As you do... She talks about being a gay icon, not getting on with Alex James and what it’s like to be on a certain magazine's ‘Cool List’.

You recently played a gig for T4 Mobile Act Unsigned. What was it like?
It was good. Not entirely sure any of the audience had any idea who we were, but it was good fun.

Did you see any of the unsigned acts play?
We saw all of them. There was a band called Hijak Oskar, which is a terrible name, but they were a really good band. Really bluesy, very talented musicians, I think they were our favourites. But all the judges were gunning for this other band called Revenue, who we weren’t very fond of. They were more of a traditional indie band shall we say.

What are you up to at the moment?
We’re just preparing for this gig we’ve got in Moscow in a couple of days. I’m just in Marks and Spencer’s trying to buy some thermal underwear actually, ’cause it’s minus three over there.

You’re teaming up with other artists to make a track for the homeless charity Shelter. Could you tell me a bit more about that?
There’s a lot of well known musicians doing it. They asked us, I think, because they wanted some young blood. They asked The Enemy as well. We’ve just been in the studio for the past ten days. They’ve used our drummer Sarah to do some drum tracks with Danny Goffey and the drummer from the enemy. And we’ve done some bass stuff with Andy Rourke and other people. I’m supposed to be helping out with some lyrics I think, and maybe doing some backing vocals.

Who are you most excited about working with?
We’re supposed to be doing a gig in March, I think, to promote it, and I was a massive Blur fan when I was a teenager, so definitely Graham Coxon I think.

How was it meeting Alex James (who was one of the judges on Mobile Act Unsigned)?
Odd. He didn’t really say much and we didn’t really say much to him, it was very weird. Maybe he’s shy, he just didn’t really have much to say. He doesn’t come over as shy onstage, having watched countless Blur gigs. But I think he was gunning for Revenue. He asked me what I thought of them and I said I didn’t really like them, and he didn’t talk to me after that, so maybe he was a bit offended that I didn’t like his favourite band.

What made you want to do the track for Shelter?
It’s a good cause, I’ve kind of experienced homelessness myself, so I was up for doing anything that could give money to people who are in that situation and hopefully help them get out of it.

You’ve often been called a New Rave band. How do you feel about that label and the New Rave scene in general?
There’s a lot of really interesting music coming out of it, regardless of what it’s called. It worked for the NME to come up with that ’cause obviously it helped with their readership. You have the solid indie fans who might not buy into the idea of bands with guitars and synths who don’t sound like Razorlight, so it kind of made sense from that point of view.

You were nominated for a Mercury Music Award. Who do you think was most deserving of the prize?
Having listened to everything again, I think Klaxons were fairly deserving, but I think I’d have liked Bat For Lashes to win. It would have been nice for them to give the award to a female artist for a start, and I think even though Klaxons have made an innovative album, at the same time they’d given it to an indie band the year before, and I think it would have been nice for them to acknowledge that indie is not the beginning and end of the universe, musically speaking. And to acknowledge the feminine contribution to music, particularly that’s been made and lauded over the last 12 months.

Do you think it’s harder to be a woman in the music industry?
Yeah, I think it’s a man’s world really. The producers are all still men, there’s still a lot of prejudice to female artists and musicians. If you speak to our drummer about her experiences as a drummer, she’s had a lot of crap from male drummers, you know ‘she’s not going to be able to hit so hard’, blah blah blah. Certainly when I was younger and perhaps less sure of myself, I was in bands with boys and I found them incredibly dismissive and I never felt comfortable putting my point across. You felt like you were the icing on their very worthy musical cake. But as you get older you get over yourself a bit, and I can shout them down now.

You’re in a band where women outnumber the men, which is unusual. How do you think this affects the dynamic?
We probably do a lot more shopping and chocolate eating than most bands… I think there’s less testosterone fuelled wailing. When boys are in bands there’s a lot of ‘well I need to do this cos I’m this person’ or ‘I need to do that cos I’m that person’ or ‘I’m this important’. There’s a lot less of that. We probably talk about our feelings a bit more. There’s a copy of Heat on the rider.

You’re quite big in Australia and you’ve toured in America and Europe. Where’s your favourite place to play?
It’s always exciting to do a gig anywhere. Every continent has a different flavour. Because we’re so well known now in Australia it’s been amazing doing gigs there because the audience response has been so insane. America was quite a revelation. I don’t think we realised what a gay-friendly band we are. We seem to be a real niche band over there. We seem to have a hip gay following, or shall we say a following that is well versed in sub-cultures, perhaps not as mainstream as we appear to be in Australia. We’re like a pop band over there, and in America we’re like a hip, underground thing, and here we’re like an art band. So you’re treated accordingly with the image you have in the country you’re playing, so it’s always a slightly different experience. You get treated like rock stars in Australia and artists in the States.

Which would you say is better, recording in the studio or performing live?
When you’ve been doing either one for any length of time you start to hanker to do the other. We’ve been touring this past year pretty relentlessly, and we’re looking forward to getting back into the studio and doing some new stuff.

Two members of the band (Tahita Bulmer and Lou Hayter) have been featured on NME’s Cool List. How does the band feel about this?
It’s good. Hopefully Sarah will get on next year and then they’ll look kindly at the boys. Otherwise they’ll get very jealous!

Rachel Bate