If you re involved in music, you ve got to want more from it than just being a backing track to going out on a Saturday night. For me, personally, music has got to express everything in my life. I like to listen to a song and for it to evoke really personal memories for me. The speaker is Rachel Devine, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist with Telstar Ponies, one of the most original bands I have ever heard.
I express so much through my music that I don t think I d be able to express otherwise, because I m quite shy, she adds. It does mean everything to me. It is the most important thing in my life, and the only way I ve got of saying that is through the music I write.
This is no idle statement, as is quickly evident from listening to their latest opus, the magnificent Voices From The New Music, which incorporates elements of Japanese hardcore, Irish folk and Sonic Youth-esque rock into their sound, all jumbled up in a finished product that dares to push back the frontiers of modern music.
It s certainly something we re very proud of, Rachel enthuses. I think you re always setting yourself a target that you never quite reach, but I think we got as close to the album that we wanted to make as we could have.
The Telstar Ponies use some very unorthodox recording methods. Rather than entering the studio with the blueprint for the finished product in hand, the Ponies prefer to carry the idea for the song into the studio and let the mood do the rest.
Going in that way, with no definite structure, means that you re never going to end up with what you expect, Rachel explains. In that way, it s more exciting and it allows much more creativity. You re never scared to add something that sounds like it might be quite strange, because you know that you can try it out.
Telstar Ponies insist that the commercial viability of their recordings does not enter into the creative process one iota.
I don t think we have any kind of idea that this is a job for us. This is what we love doing. We don t expect to make any money out of it. We re not a hobby band. First and foremost in our minds is that w have some kind of creative integrity. The kind of music we hope to hear from other people is the kind of music we re going to play.
Of course, we re hoping people are going to enjoy the stuff. There s nothing I like better than when I find someone who enjoys the music that we make. But we never set out to write songs that are going to make people join in: when you know it s going to be a big hit and it s going to make someone s summer and they re all going to dance to it in the clubs on a Saturday night.
Since the recording of Voices From The New Music, two of the quartet that made up Telstar Ponies had left the band: bassist Gavin Laird and former Teenage Fanclub drummer Brendan O Hare. I wondered was it an acrimonious split or were there animosities involved?
Brendan thought that we were becoming too much of a folky band, sighs Rachel, and he didn t like any of the last recordings, which were Brewery Of Eggshells , Song Of Ansuz and The Fall Of Little Summer . He thought they had gone against everything we had done before and we were going down a path he wasn t interested in following.
It is fair enough for him to have that opinion, but we don t think that just because we were trying out these influences in our music we were going to start playing in folk clubs on a Saturday night.
Gavin had always wanted to start his own band and was at some point going to do that. He thought it was a good time to leave as well. He didn t want, six months down the line, to disrupt it again.
Replacements haven t been easy to find, though. It s not like you can put a poster up saying Drummer Wanted , because we do want to find someone who is interested in playing the music. A big part of Telstar Ponies is improvisation and experimentalism. We need to find someone who s right for that and who would be happy doing it.
All of which means that Telstar Ponies are unable to go on the road for the time being, but Rachel insists that they are still able to continue exploring new territory in the recording studio, where herself and Brendan Keenan can handle all the instrumental and vocal duties.
A native of the ould sod, Rachel sometimes yearns for a return to Ireland, and doesn t rule out a decampment to Dublin in the future. I miss Ireland an awful lot, she says. I sometimes think I d like to go back to Dublin and set up some kind of a base there, but I m not really clued up on the Dublin music scene. I presume it wouldn t be terribly receptive to me.
For once, I suspect she may be completely wrong. n