PONY PONY RUN RUN

So all you mad professors out there are probably wondering what would happen if you put together every single piece of music a man heard, recorded, hated and reviewed during his young life. Enthusiasts of furious musical chemistry, we can feel you bubbling with curiosity to hear what a band sounds like - however unlikely that such a group really exists – that cites Devo, the Beach Boys, Tortoise, Enya, Yelex, Daft Punk, Blur, The Cure, Pavement, Autechre, Plastikman, DMX Krew, Kraftwerk, the Rentals, the Cars, Steve Reich, the Sparks, House of Pain, Reel 2 Real, Weezer and even zouk among their influences, either direct or indirect.

We are proud to announce that such a hair-brained, utterly pop-drunk in the most noble and revolutionary sense of the term) band does indeed exist. And it’s called Pony Pony Run Run: two brothers Gaëtan and Amaël, and Antonin, three lads from Nantes who formed a band during some extremely fruitful studies in fine arts. Nothing innocent about that, for music and art thrive on everything they can find – these are all-consuming disciplines. Fine arts. Pay attention to the plural because Pony Pony Run Run is a band with many faces. They are intelligent, and smart and open-minded enough not to go down the wrong paths. They don't do posturing, taboos, value judgments. Whatever is good – an album, a song, an extract – is good. Period. “We’re Nineties kids,” they say by way of explanation. “We listened to anything and everything. We were raised on whatever was on the radio, the good stuff and the slightly shocking stuff. A mixture of dance and rock, some very mainstream stuff and then some far more cutting-edge stuff. We like everything. We’re not ashamed to say that we liked No Limit by 2 Unlimited; we don’t look at things on a scale of values. We don’t know what good manners are anymore. We have no guilty pleasures.” Just pleasures. So these boys from Nantes don’t have a broad musical background – theirs is totally global. They’re obsessed with songs - hit songs. And their first album, You Need Pony Pony Run Run, has bags of hits on it, bags of great songs. Real humdingers for young and old, for girls and boys. Protean hits that’ll have you shaking those bones of yours on the dance floor like everyone else, then jiggling your brain-cells at home. They’ll drive your senses wild in a clammy gig and in the piece and quiet of your own sitting room. This band are capable of writing a stadium-filling anthem that you can listen to on your own as well; it can make songs that sound perfect on FM while also delighting the ayatollahs of indie.

The tracks on You Need Pony Pony Run Run, the band’s first album, are like uncontrollable, hyperactive rockets, hedonistic and climactic rockets crammed with enough energy to make a nuclear power station go green with envy. They’re bright shiny plastic or chrome, and sometimes bombastic too. They’ll have you trembling all over again with the innocent, physical sensations of those wonderful teenage years. And there’s a good dose of irony beneath these English tunes and the conventions of international pop. They’re brilliant and scuzzy, synthetic and a touch lo-fi all at the same time (remember that these guys quote 2 Unlimited and Nirvana as influences and almost in the same breath). But You Need Pony Pony Run Run isn’t just one headlong rush on tyres pumped full of laughing gas; it contains instants of pure romance, some quieter songs, impressive contrasts, and moments of incredible subtlety. The boys from Nantes repaint the world in the colours of a huge flashing rainbow, but the great producer Frédéric Lo (Daniel Darc, Alex Beaupain, Stephan Eicher…) has helped them add some touches of grey to their dazzling artwork.

A good part of Europe has already succumbed. Thanks to the magic of Internet, some smart thinking and a determination to smash down national borders along with the boundaries of music, Pony Pony Run Run, who are seriously good live, have already toured just about everywhere before they’ve even brought out their first album. “We’ve played 120 gigs everywhere between Brest and Warsaw - Benelux, Germany, Spain, Holland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy and the rest. We’ve put in the miles, and that’s bonded us together as well as convincing us that our music is truly international and accessible to everyone, written according to conventions that seem universal.” There are rumours that the band have been approached to support a multi-platinum-winning American artist, a girl who tried to kiss another girl – yep, that’s the one. So this is surely just the beginning: Pony Pony Run Run will soon be causing old Richter some headaches, because this earthquake’s going to shake up pop all over the globe.