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CHY010: TALL PONY – I’M YOUR BOYFRIEND NOW
Release date: 02/07/07
Available from www.cherryademusic.co.uk
Distributed online and in shops by Cargo
Cherryade is delighted to announce its tenth release, the highly anticipated debut single by Tall Pony.
In the autumn of 2006 Huw Stephens played a song by a duo from Cheltenham called Tall Pony on his BBC Radio 1 unsigned show. The duo made up of Tony Gage & Paul Towey had recorded the song 3 years previously and were unprepared for the public reaction that followed their first national airplay, and which led to them having the surprise underground hit of the year on their hands. Huw Stephens was inundated with e-mails from listeners asking about the song, where could they get it, how could they find out more about the band, and “I’m Your Boyfriend Now” duly became the show’s most requested song of the year. Despite their elusiveness the band began to build up a following of high profile fans at Radio 1, including Rob Da Bank and Colin Murray; not bad for a band that hadn’t played a single gig or released a record!
In December they played their first ever gig at the BBC Maida Vale studios at Huw Stephens’ Christmas party in front of a live studio audience. This session was then broadcast on Huw’s Radio 1 show, and at the end of 2006, Tall Pony reached number 1 in the annual Festive Fifty countdown (in its first year on internet station Dandelion Radio), one of the few unsigned bands ever to achieve this.
“I’m Your Boyfriend Now” is a darkly funny satire on the selfish, misogynistic side of relationships and is brilliantly observed, uncomfortably true to life, and the sinister delivery of the lyrics delivers horror and amusement in equal measures, topping off a sleazy atmospheric musical backdrop. The result is a unique and memorably twisted pop song sure to be one of the hits of 2007.
Paul and Tony met at Cheltenham Art College in 1983 and played together (with Richard Bowers and Mike Brookes) in Ha-Ha the Electorate and Grenade until 1987. Geography dictated that they pursued their music independently, either making music with other bands, chiefly Radioactive Sparrow for Tony, or alone, as Paul did. In 2002 they began to work together on music again - initially in a remote way through sending lyrics to one another; and then making a recording and sending it back; a competitive element was to write nastier and nastier words. The following year they actually started recording together in Paul's house; one of the resulting tracks from the first session was “I'm Your Boyfriend Now.”
There were 3 Saturday afternoon sessions over a period of 12 months, which produced 30 songs. Whilst cataloguing this material in September 2006, Paul sent “I'm Your Boyfriend Now,” “because I thought the track was too good to keep a secret,” to Radio 1's Huw Stephens. The name Tall Pony was “just something I came up with to have something to put on the demo CD cover,” explains Paul; surprised with the reaction and attention, they hastily created a myspace page, www.myspace.com/tallpony, which quickly became full of messages from people asking where they could download or get a CD of “I'm Your Boyfriend Now.” In November they issued a limited edition 3-track CD that sold out before Christmas.
Paul and Tony have spent the first months of 2007 recording new songs and trying to recruit musicians to form a band in order to play live, as they have been turning down “amazing offers” of gigs: “no one has responded to the notices we've put up in all the music shops in Gloucester and Cheltenham!”
‘I’m Your Boyfriend Now’ is scheduled for release on Cherryade on Monday June 26th and is a strictly limited edition release. It will be available from the Cherryade website and good independent record shops.
Disturbing! In a good way! Like a previously passed on gem, the incredible House Husbands track "Do you?" ('My name is Brad...'), not to be read as a statement on how to actually treat women. The soundtrack is somehow made even more terrifying by that monotone dictation. Shiver. Sickly hysterical and not for the faint-hearted. (Rullsenberg Rules, http://rullsenbergrules.blogspot.com/20 ... chive.html)
Now this is what I miss about British culture. A record which sounds amateurishly homemade yet utterly hip and gets played on mainstream radio (I first heard it on the BBC). Invoking in their twisted poptones the ghosts of Cabaret Voltaire and Public Image Ltd, Tall Pony (actually two chaps from Cheltenham named Tony and Paul, heh-heh) deliver menacing ultimatums to a new girlfriend: "We will talk about war, cars and football". Creepy, amusing and utterly wonderful.l (Islands of Ecstasy, http://islandsofecstasy.blogspot.com/20 ... d-now.html)
Tall Pony are an unsigned duo from the west country. This dark little bastard just popped up on the radio when I was driving home and instantly grabbed my attention. That doesn't happen very often. The premise is simple, a monotone litany of misogynistic instructions to a new girlfriend over a repetitive loop of squelching beats with the occasional swirl and bleep chucked in for good measure, and an off kilter backing vocal that sounds like it's been recorded through a yoghurt pot on a string. And it's fucking ace. Yes it's twisted, it squirms its way through your mind leaving behind a slimy residue, a stain behind your eyes that you just can't shift. Sinister, depraved, and utterly utterly brilliant. (Colon Cancer fanzine)