Last Thursday night, New Young Pony Club was what the punters had paid their $65+BF for, so close to New Years Eve! And when they hit the stage, those that had begun to dance were excited by their stage entrance, and roared a welcome cheer as the synthesised guitar band ran onto stage. Four six-metre-long vertical silver sparkled metres of material displayed the letters “N Y P C”, the acronym for the UK band, in banners that hung in backdrop.

The drive of NYPC comes from the energy of singer Tahita Bulmer who took the first song dancing.
Her and the other females keyboardist Lou Hayter, and drummer Sarah Jones, wore silver sparkled costumes in match to the banners. To look at the band, with Tahita bouncing about stage, the bare shouldered and lipsticked beauty on keys and the young female on drums, a newcomer would think that NYPC was a female act fleshed by the males on bass and guitar. You could even say with their 80s synthesised vibe, that the song Girls Just Want to Have Fun could describe the feel of the band and their dance moves. Not many would know that Tahita and the guitarist had started the band, and found the other females and bass player Igor Volk to play with them live.

Andy Spence played guitar on the audience left, unmoved in his own cool way, and appeared to be the real rock player that made NYPC a crossover act.
Though seen as the production man behind the voice of Tahita, he does not have a singing microphone on stage. The bass, keyboardist and drummer do have microhones, support Tahita with backing vocals. By the end of the first track Tahita stripped her belt to reveal the silver dress as an open vest. Dressed in black opague stockings, black shorts and a black undertop, she remained energetic and dancing, and ceased to change costume further for the set.

Her dark skin made her a cool rapper, with a voice that commanded natural control of the lyrics that had sounded electronically machined on their CD. Although the recorded sound does have more voice production, it is not a negative, as gave the female voice the mechanical 80s computer feel that make them such a fun band. But in a live setting, the show proved the band could achieve their vocal sound without sounding like a fake robot onstage, and she moved from left to right of the stage to encourage the audience to dance.

The band played songs from their album Fantastic Playroom, though the other songs that graced their MySpace page like Grey with the chorus line, “It’s all right – as long as its Black or White”, turning out to be the crowd singalong favourites. A cover of Technotronic Pump Up the Jam proved a crowd pleaser for an audience that may have been dancing since New Years Eve. Though many of the younger audience could not recognise the song as a cover, (or as one person asked is that their song?), NYPC made it sound like Salt N Pepa with Tahita on vocals.

“Thanks for making this feel like a homecoming Mel-bourne,” an accented Tahita said at the end of the show. And so it was.