The pony express

“Fuk youse! Morrissey likes me record!"
Such is the battle cry of Pony Club mastermind, Mark Cullen, in response to the detractors of his first (essentially) solo recording, Home Truths. Not that there are many; the album won almost exclusively rave reviews (including a 9/12 from hotpress) and succeeded in establishing its creator as one of Ireland’s most musically exciting ex-pats. However after eight years, life in London lost its charm for Cullen and he came back to his native Dublin in order to lay the blocks for his sophomore LP. But romantic notions of returning to the motherland – with the wife in tow – did not exactly live up to expectations.
"When I came back to Dublin," he explains, "I had to live with me mam again, so I set up home with my wife in my old childhood bedroom and put a computer in the corner to record. Me wife was like, ‘We’re living in a kip in Finglas and you keep me in a bedroom!’ I knew I had to work fast, so I didn’t spend ages pissing around with the album. It only took about two months for the recording and the mixing. With Home Truths I took a long time, about six months, and the songs had been hanging around for a while before that too, so this one was pretty quick in comparison."
Understandable, really. Aptly too the record was titled Family Business – although, musically, that's something Cullen has learned to live without since first assuming solo control following the "mutual dropping" of his band Fixed Stars from Mercury, and their subsequent break up.
"When you’re making music, or anything at all, you want to please people and take their suggestions," he reflects. "But sometimes they wear you down to the point where, with songs, you give in and go, ‘I’ll try doing it your way’. But then when you use their ideas, you wind up feeling like it’s not your record. It’s some A&R guy’s or some producer’s or something. When it’s just you, you don’t have to answer to anyone. You don’t have the safety net of being able to share mistakes, that’s true, but this is the first time I’ve been able to go ‘hands up, I fucked up’. And I think that’s a good thing."
Aside from the aforementioned Morrissey connection - the band played support to him on several tour dates including the Royal Albert Hall - Pony Club have supported the likes of The Streets and the Dandy Warhols.
Says Mark: "Supporting The Streets one time, there were all these hip hop kids looking up at the stage wondering what the wooden things with strings were. I think we won them over though. We played with the Dandy Warhols too. Our old road crew worked for them and they used to play our records on the tour bus. They do have a reputation, but that’s all it is. There’s nothing mad about them at all, they’re in bed by ten. I drank them all under the table and everything else. Wusses."

The Pony Club’s Home Truths album is out now on Setanta