Listen to New Young Pony Club's Influences Spotify Playlist here.

Eine Kleine Nacht Musik 'Ertrinken'

Andy - This album was criminally overlooked when it came out, Henry Riton's lush production and great arrangements really lifted my spirits in an otherwise quite dry time for music.

Prince 'Hot Thing'

Andy - From one of my all time favourite albums. The simplicity but effectiveness of this Groove always blows me away.

Devo 'Going Under'

Andy - I love the fact this starts quite rigid and cold but then subtley builds and moves into a really epic vocal led outro.

Roxy Music 'Both Ends Burning'

Andy - Effortlessly cool. You could imagine dancing to this all night at a party in the 70s.

The Cure 'Just Like Heaven'

Andy - I love a lot of early cure stuff. Even the ultra dark of 17 seconds but this song is one of those Cure songs where Robert manages to capture melancholy but make it uplifting beautifully. The guitar and keyboard interplay is also gorgeous on this song.

Magazine 'The Light Pours Out Of Me'

Andy - I was never really into Magazine then I heard this and it totally changed my perception of them. Love the productiond and how it starts from a really simple dirty bass drum groove but then opens up like the light pouring in!

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark 'Electricity'

Andy - An Electro Pop classic! Really pre-dates all this Atari game sounding stuff we hear now. These guys wrote great songs later on but I like the loosenes of this with all the instrumental sections coming in and out.

Animal Collective 'My Girls'

Andy - This is probably the best song released in 2009 if not the decade. It's so uplifting and really unique. These guys have their own little world going on I totally get transported there everytime I hear this. Also manages to rip off 'You Got The Love' without sounding like a pastiche. Genius!

Broken Social Scene '7/4 (Shoreline)'

Andy - Another fave album for both of us I think. Remember first hearing this and having that feeling of hope that there is still classic music being made. Another Journey this too.

Grace Jones 'Unlimited Capacity For Love'

Andy - Always loved this song, it's great for car journeys for some reason. Just love the deep but groovy production. Sly and Robbie doing disco with the greatest Diva of all time singing her heart out. Nothing in this world can be better than that.

Japan 'The Art Of Parties' (Single Version)

Andy - This is such a weird song, on paper it shouldn't work, you know a bit like the Bumble Bee! It's a pop song hidden in an art/funk jam. Me and Ty were obsessed with it for about a week whilst making the record!

B52s 'There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon)'

Ty - One of the few original NYPC touchstones to make it as a formative influence on this album. Weird shouty female harmonies, garage organ riffs and a general air of defiance coupled with melody. Sometimes I think I am Kate and Fred at the same time.

Jesus and Mary Chain 'Honey's Dead'

Ty - Absolutely in my top fifty tracks of all time. I can feel this one buried deep in the foundations of the album. It seemed to incapsulate everything that was alluring and frightening about the journey to adulthood in three sleazy noise soaked minutes.

Red House Painters 'Katy Song'

Ty - I can remember listening to this in my bunk when we were touring intensively, feeling very much as though the world weary quality of Mark Kozelek's voice, the beauty of the lyrics, which are about the end of a love affair, the air of wistful sadness that infuses the track, was speaking directly about my situation.

The Pixies 'Velouria'

Ty - One of my favourite bands of all time. It was really hard to pick a single track, such is the all pervasiveness of their hold on me. The lure for me, the blend of power and fragility in the instrumentation and vocals, the skewed whimsical lyrics, the vocal interplay between Kim and Frank in pretty much every track.

Walker Bros 'Nite Flights'

Ty - Just gorgeous and epic. It’s like a lesson in layering atonal discordant harmonies with each and ending up with something beautiful and melodic.

PJ Harvey 'Yuri G'

Ty - She's another seminal influence on this band. I spent a long time with this album. Walking to and from school, incandescent with adolescent rage listening to this psychosexual tortured pan sexual melodrama. God only knows what's its actual effect on me was.

David Bowie 'Stay'

Ty - One of our friends used to run a tiny club night in Clerkenwell once a month. He would always play this track at some point. It’s one I return to again and again as a classical example of a track about something sad which you can really cut loose and have a great time dancing to, which is a great NYPC tendency.

The Besnard Lakes 'And You Lied To Me'

Ty - A recent track that seems to belong to the early nineties that I found myself obsessed with while we toured. Drenched in atmosphere and possessing one of the most unexpected lead solos in history. I love it.

The Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir 'Erghen Diado'

Ty - A recent obsession, recent meaning in the past five years. I saw them on TV a few years ago and it blew my head off. The harmonies they use never fail to make the hair stand up on my entire body. It’s as though they have managed to harness the uncanny. Totally otherworldly.

The Optimist by NYPC is out now