Ken Seeno: We did the welcoming bit with Battles and then the Badlands by ourselves. When those kinds of things happen there’s some bickering between each other. People break down.
BCR: You do seem really tight though. When things are going badly, when you’re feeling the pressure, do you still feed off each other or…
Dustin Wong: The live shows hold us together.
Jeremy Hyman: I think if something’s wrong we’ve gotten to the point where we just have to open it up, especially before we play. Just get it out. The last thing we want to do is ruin the reason we came out. Like, why are we all here? So we can play tonight. We want it to be good vibes.
BCR: Do you think your origins help keep it together? The fact that you didn’t actively seek to be a band, but that you were thrust together without any manufacture or forethought? [A teacher named Jeremy Sigler at the school they all went to decided that they would be in band]
Molly Siegel: Yeah, I think it does.
Jeremy Hyman: It’s definitely a fresh start, everybody starting on the same page.
Dustin Wong: Definitely no back issues.
Jeremy Hyman: I still believe in it, I still believe in that teacher.
BCR: Most bands start because they want to be rock stars or something whereas you all started together due to a focus on art.
Ken Seeno: We wanted to be artists instead of rockstars…
BCR: Has that affected the way you’ve made music and maybe galvanised as people? You seem so strong together and happy with each other…
Dustin Wong: I think everybody’s doing what they want in the songs. We make sure that everybody’s into their own part, into their own melody and rhythms. We really make sure that when we write a song, if something’s not working for one person then we need to change that.
Jeremy Hyman: We’re not working for any one person.
Jeremy Hyman
Dustin Wong: I don’t want to make it sound like we think we’re the best band or whatever…
BCR: Stop excusing yourself!
Dustin Wong: Well… I feel like we’ve taken a slow route where we’ve changed a lot but we’re not changing our sound drastically. Like, one minute we want to change our genre or something. We’re just writing organically, one song to the next song. Like stepping stones. It sounds really cliché but I’ve seen bands fall because they’ve tried to change their sound to stay ahead of the curve and we’re just not doing that.
Jeremy Hyman: I love that you prefixed that with “I’m not saying we’re the best band”…
Ken Seeno: That sounds really self-important! But I’m not saying that!
BCR: You’ve definitely progressed though. The first album is quite chaotic – ordered, but chaotic, and the new one…
Ken Seeno: We’ve got to show you the videos of our first shows, unreleased stuff…
Jeremy Hyman: It’s unreal. It’s chaos. It’s ridiculous.
Ken Seeno: We’ve all got such different tastes that whenever we go to write a new song we all want to go in different directions so we’re not going to burn out on one idea, maybe later, but it’s just like, I feel like everybody wants to write a different song when we go to write and it just evolves to a point where we all meet in the middle.
BCR: So how does it work? Do you all do the instrumentals and then Molly comes in later or…
Dustin Wong: I feel like, when we’re writing the songs together, the structure has to be solid for Molly to be able to be able to reflect on it. The platform has to be sturdy. Like, the canvas has to be really well structured, have a lot of paint on it.
Molly Siegel: You guys will come up with a part and I can usually write with that before it’s a song. There’s been a few times where I’ve tried to bring in a melody but the way it seems that we write best is when I sort of improve over something that’s somewhat already written. We’re not a verse / chorus band so… Bringing in a vocal melody is a really different way of writing than what we do.
Molly Siegel
BCR: It seems to me that the boys are building on traditional hooks, traditional chord structures and then they string them together in such a way that none of them sound like the inspirations or traditions that they came from in the first place. You can hear Beach Boys stuff in there, Fleetwood stuff in there whereas you, Molly, have almost more free reign than they do.
Molly Siegel: Definitely.
BCR: But how can you mimic so well the improvisation and bedlam on the records when you’re on stage? Is there much improv on stage? Because it sounds so like the records…
Molly Siegel: Always some. Not as much. Most of it is structured, but every single song I do something different I’d say. A lot of it is dictated by how I’m feeling or... I don’t know, it’s dictated by everything.
Ken Seeno: I think it’s just, and this is from hearing it everyday, it sounds different from the record.
Molly Siegel: There’s definitely things that I do every single time but it’s more changing the things that I do always, just changing them around a little bit. Like if I do a melodic part three times, sometimes I’ll only do it twice. It’s more like that. It’s not crazy different. Sometimes it doesn’t sound right to me. Sometimes it feels like I can’t do what I did last night.
Dustin Wong: I think it’s the same with all of us but it’s more subtle. We tweak some things in every show. Every show there’s something slightly different. I can always tell each day Jeremy’s rhythms are slightly different. The songs are an aftermath of improvisation. That’s how we write songs most of the times. It’s kind of like documenting improvisation.
Ken Seeno: Trimming stuff down, the essences of parts. It’s sort of fleeting sometimes.
Dustin Wong: A lot of times we record practices of jamming and we’ll pick up parts.
Ken Seeno: It might only last a few seconds. It takes a really long time to write them and then it sounds really ordinary but then we play them over and over again.
BCR: So they’re puzzle pieces.
Ken Seeno: It feels like a puzzle when I play but that’s kinda what I’m looking for. It’s a challenge sometimes.
Molly Siegel: It’s like Jenga.
Jeremy Hyman: It could all coming crashing down at any moment.
BCR: Speaking of, have any of you looked at your website http://ponytailband.com/ recently? Because it’s all amateur lesbian porn and Hentai. One link is called Pony Girls Punished.
Molly Siegel: Reaallly?
Jeremy Hyman: Oh god…
[Ponytail’s manager then looks up the website]
Ken Seeno: That is kind of awesome.
Ponytail Manager: All the links are inaccurate though. I’ve clicked on Two Horny Bubble Butts and it’s gone to Sexy Lesbian Affairs and neither of these girls have Bubble Butts.
BCR: This is where all your fans are going to. So my final question – what would you have like me to ask you?
Jeremy Hyman: What was your favourite memory from this tour?
BCR: Ok… What was your favourite memory from this tour?
Jeremy Hyman: Amsterdam…
[Que uproarious laughter and a general consensus that no one is allowed to answer this question.]
BCR: You can’t leave me with something so tantalising…
Ken Seeno: I’m going to silent on this one.
Jeremy Hyman: Ok, so we’d already finished the show, we’d already bought the weed, we had the joint already made. We’re smoking and walking and watching the prostitutes. I run into a pole while watching the prostitutes. We walk to the dildo monument of Amsterdam and ah… We just walk around fucking stoned and we go to a live sex show, a peep show, and we go into these booths and in the middle THERE’S TWO PEOPLE FUCKING.
Molly Siegel: We all watched somebody fucking, together. We were in different booths but we all watched it.
Dustin Wong: Two Euros for two minutes.
Molly Siegel: It was fucked up.
Jeremy Hyman/Ken Seeno/Dustin Wong: It was fucked up.
