New Young Pony Club are a five piece from London, who's biggest break so far has easily been their nomination for the 2007 Mercury Music Prize, an award many insiders are suggesting they'll walk away with on the night. It seems a random choice given the mainstream wins of the past couple of years including Franz Ferdinand and the Arctic Monkeys, but Fantastic Playroom, the band's debut offering is just as accomplished as either record, if not more so.

Pigeon-holed wrongly into that Nu-Rave lunacy that only NME readers seem to use, the band's sound is an eclectic mix of indie, pop, dance and 80s synth, with elements of punk throughout the proceedings. While never as extreme as, say, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, lyrically and indeed musically there are underlying themes of punk, evident in a lot of the faster-paced tracks as well as the laid-back simple vocals that accompany much of this music. Opening track "Get Lucky" is largely representative of this, with the following track and it's tribal grooves and basslines, "Hiding On The Staircase" showing exactly just how variable and experimental this band can be. All of course before flowing with ease into the 80s synth-funk-heaven of "Ice Cream", a track very reminiscent of genre stablemates Cansei de Ser Sexy.

There's time however where you just want more. Unfortunately Fantastic Playroom never hits the extremities of volume, always instead remaining low-fi and subtle. An example of this is "The Bomb", with a pacing designed to entice you straight towards the closing seconds with it's structure and beat, but when the time comes falling completely short, and never going quite as crazy as you'd like it to, despite the pulsing synth at about the 3.17 mark of the track timeline, but as the track suggests lyrically, good for dancing to nonetheless. "Jerk Me", the track that follows, is entirely similar in it's approach, but unfortunately refuses to build up to anything whatsoever, and there's similar moments elsewhere on the album.

From that midpoint in the album things get a little different, and sans completely the charm owned by that fantastic first half. There's little redemption, but penultimate track "F.A.N" is a hands-down winner, as with the other highlights of the album, mixing that simplistic approach with real content and charm, again the band fusing genres and styles into whatever they want. Lyrically it's just as low-fi and abstract as the rest of the album, but throughout the playthrough frontwoman Tahita Bulmer should be applauded for being funky, groovy, and well, altogether cool. Her vocal contribution to this effort is easily what makes the album, and her presence cannot go unnoticed easily with the singing -despite it's simplicity- being a major draw to the overall appeal of the album.

While the "Nu-Rave" indietronica labels currently show no signs of stopping and stop themselves from being "this year's big thang", NYPC are one of the bands that define this new hybrid makeshift genre hands down with ease. Thought the debut album at many points in it's pacing feels empty, the band nonetheless should be applauded for being experimental, funky, and altogether different from the UK music industry, if not the other Mercury Music Prize nominees they'll be facing in the coming weeks.