Cult heroes: Tahita Bulmer demands to be judged on her smarts, not her looks

NYPC might have been consigned to the new rave recycling centre, but they’re still out there, making clever, catchy records that deserve to be heard

Ask me about cult heroes, and I can already smell the dust. Because cult heroes always seem to belong to the past, don’t they? It’s a musky old business, like an archeological dig in a giant record crate: we rummage around looking for neglected names to excavate and re-evaluate with the benefit of hindsight. There’s an undeniable whiff of history about the whole thing.

But I don’t think you always need the safety net of elapsed time to spot a cult hero. They’re here right now, in their prime, walking and working among us – even if they’ve fallen between the cracks. Mine is Tahita Bulmer, lead singer of NYPC. In 2005, NYPC – or, as they were called then, New Young Pony Club – were monstrously hyped. In the past 10 years, they’ve slowly slipped out of mainstream favour. And yet, she and her band have carried on just the same, making music that’s ridiculously smart, fun, inventive and ambitious; the type of pop music we always say we crave. It baffles me that more people don’t seem to notice.

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by Ben Hewitt via Electronic music | The Guardian