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Problem Pony.
 If you are a fan of new country music in Adelaide, you may have enjoyed the soft and sensual sounds of all-girl quartet Problem Pony on occasion over the last couple of seasons. Their use of ukulele and accordion - sometimes even in the same song - set them apart from the regular urban-country hoedown from the very beginning.
While both instruments still feature there have been some changes in the stables. The band returned to audiences after a long hiatus with a show at the Cabaret Festival entitled 'The Sound Of The Moon', and, continuing a lunar theme, are about to release their debut full-length album 'To Catch The Moon'.
"The last eighteen months we have changed quite a lot. Before that we were definitely in the alternative country style and we could easily be called that - we did more cover tunes of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams - but in the last eighteen months we have developed our writing more. So this is going to be interesting - we don't even know where our album will sit in the shelves, because we don't even know what we are now," giggles Gayle Buckby, accordion player and songwriter. "Because all four members write, and all write quite differently, it is quite a varied album. It has become a strength because there is quite a variety and yet it is linked by our unusual instrumentation."
This instrumentation is by no means crowded or complicated, and it veers from a minimalist country flavour to a French romantic melody to stripped-back blues.
"We like the spaces between the notes, not just the notes themselves, and we are a really always conscious in arrangements that it has that Pony style, that we are not all playing a million notes a minute. So we are probably going away a bit from the country thing, but there are still links to that. It is so easy to overdo things: keeping it simple is deceptively hard to do," Buckby explains thoughtfully. "Certainly the French accordion thing is where I come from originally, and I would never be the kind of person who would play a gimmicky country accordion. And Dylan [Woolcock] comes from a Euro background, so I think those two things mix really well. That was quite an accidental thing - all of it has been accidental."
Woolcock joined Problem Pony at the beginning of 2004 after the departure of Robyn ("Bob") Chalklen, who left to focus on playing as half of The Yearlings. "Dylan fits in really well with the band personality-wise, and his style was so different to Bob's, we just thought 'let's go there, let's just change and go somewhere else'."
And so the sound of 'To Catch The Moon' is disarming in its combination of worldly scope (a whole song in French!) and down-home triggers, such as seagulls in the opening bars of the album in At Sea. The group made the recording a collaborative affair, as the photos on their website attest. "We wanted to be a little bit experimental, so we got a lot of guest artists to come in and do a bit of whistling or singing harmonies, so we spent a lot more time and money because of that, but it was a good experience."
The venue of Problem Pony's album launch is intriguing - Holden Street Theatres in Hindmarsh - as are the support acts, who include ukulele lady Rose Turtle Ertler, who has just released her own album of electric, effects-laden ukulele songs. She joins local stars like Nigel "Home For The Def" Koop and Jim Redgate for a very special night of song.
Narelle Walker
 | Problem Pony launch 'To Catch The Moon' at the Holden St Theatres on Sat 16 July. |
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