Ponytail were too polite and sweet to ask me to leave, so I spent a giggling and weirdly salacious hour with them before their third ever London show. Between the calms tones of the band members and Molly Siegel’s pleasingly squealing laugh backstage at The End, they told me things I never knew I would hear from the mouths of such seemingly innocent people…
BCR: It seems like you guys went supernova really quickly – 2005 you got together, 2006 long tour, 2007 you toured with Battles… who did you tour with in 2006?
Jeremy Hyman: Our lonesome.
Dustin Wong: We just kind of made it up as we went along
Ken Seeno: We just made our own tours and played a bunch of other shows and then in 2007 we toured with Battles and Deathset. It’s only one year but it made a big difference.
BCR: It’s taken three years to get to where you are now but it’s been really steady…
Dustin Wong: It’s been going really fast…
Jeremy Hyman: It’s been unbelievably lucky…
Ken Seeno: It does feel steady actually but it’s still really surprising.
Dustin Wong: Every six months or something, something happens that we’re all really amazed by. Whether it was our first tour in the very beginning of 2006, to Kamehameha being released and then the tour with Battles and Deathset and then someone actually wanting to release our new album…
Jeremy Hyman: It’s like stepping stones.
Dustin Wong: I think this date was the first show where we got an email saying you guys have got a show in London. We were like really?
Ken Seeno: Which was awesome. We’d never played a show outside the US and it was only a few months away. We were like, I guess… we’ll be in… London… Now it’s believable because we’re here.
BCR: So was Barden’s Boudoir your first show here?
Dustin Wong: Yeah, we landed that morning. I was worried that we wouldn’t live up to that show ‘cos it was just really good energy. We played the other night in Amersham Arms and it was really fun. The London crowds have been awesome.
Ken Seeno: Hard to believe…
Ken Seeno
BCR: You seem a little overwhelmed by the reception you’ve gotten here... Is it a good overwhelmed?
Molly Siegel: Yeah, definitely.
Ken Seeno: Way better to be overwhelmed than underwhelmed… It’s really hard to believe. How did they even hear us? We now know there’s internet here.
Molly Siegel: The idea that anybody has actually heard of us anywhere in Europe is so surprising to me. This tour, you can compare it to our US tours in terms of how many people are coming to our shows and stuff.
BCR: Why is it so surprising when you’ve had the New York Times and others lauding you?
Jeremy Hyman: In America it doesn’t really translate. There’s so much going on and there’s so much information, you really have to look for it.
Dustin Wong: It’s just really hard to gauge.
Ken Seeno: It’s weird when you see something in print. It’s so gradual when you make a record and get press out.
Dustin Wong: Even when something is mass produced to thousands of people it doesn’t mean that every one of them is going to read it. It’s virtual… I just don’t really believe it.
Ken Seeno: It’s hard to believe it’s real. It’s hard to believe it’s the real New York Times, it’s hard to believe that it’s the real Spin or something like that. I just don’t believe that it’s really happening. Maybe it hasn’t hit me yet. If it had happened out of the blue in 2006 or something but we’ve been… driving through a tunnel and…
BCR: No time to blink?
Ken Seeno: Like the Animal Collective stuff is like, it comes at you and then it’s gone. It’s just really weird.
Molly Siegel: It’s seems like here, maybe it’s just our first impression, but here people seem to be a lot more focused on new music. In America it seems like there’s not as much focus in big media. People aren’t searching.
BCR: So they’re waiting for the radio to tell them what to listen to?
Jeremy Hyman: Yeah, it’s temporary, too, there.
Dustin Wong
BCR: I think that’s on both sides of the water though. It’s why I use the word steady when describing your incline so far, it’s a more natural progression…
Dustin Wong: I think that goes back to why none of us are very enamoured with the press because the type of music that we’ve all had a taste for has all been more word of mouth. I don’t think any of us would look to the New York Times for music or any of these magazines. The only way I hear about music is through friends or colleagues, for lack of a better word. Did I just say that? Colleagues… The type of music we’re making is more independent of a media system.
Molly Siegel: It’s more internet based than anything, Pitchfork and stuff like that.
BCR: Also, from what I’m seeing in the States, the New York scene at the minute, Baltimore obviously and a bit in Seattle again there seems to be of a congeniality or that bands are giving a shit more about each other and the scenes that they’re in, the bands that they play with.
Ken Seeno: With Baltimore it’s a smaller city and there aren’t really any benefactors or establishments that will give it out for free. So starting a band and doing your own shows is really the only option. I still think there’s not that many opportunities for visual arts there but for bands there’s definitely a community. It was weird, we played New York at CMJ, really stacked bill and Jeremy was like, none of these bands are from New York. There are some amazing bands from Brooklyn but there needs to be that efficiency for people to make their own fun and rise up like underdogs. I’m not trying to be too self-important about the Baltimore scene but… There’s nothing going on in Baltimore until you make it happen.
Dustin Wong: I think in Baltimore you have to do something to be a part of anything. It’s very coincidental.
BCR: So you’ve got till Oct 31st for this tour… It’s been two months so far?
Dustin Wong: It’s been a little over two months.
BCR: Has it felt like two months?
Jeremy Hyman: No, it’s felt like less than a month… It doesn’t feel that bad.
Dustin Wong: I was a bit worried. Our other tour was really short. I think we got really spoilt with Battles, we got treated really well and then it switched to DIY. It switched to ultra DIY, getting paid $20 a show.
BCR: That should humble you!
Jeremy Hyman: It did humble us… We got made fun of…
BCR: Did you do the middle bit of the States?
Jeremy Hyman: Yeah, ha, you have to…
