Spotlight On... Dead Pony

On their brand new EP, Eat My Dust!, Glasgow’s Dead Pony have levelled up. Drawing inspiration from the nostalgia of the noughties, the SAY Award-nominated four-piece comprised of singer Anna Shields, guitarist Blair Crichton, bassist Liam Adams and drummer Euan Lyons expertly fuse together alt-rock, punk and nu-metal into something that sounds altogether fresh and exciting. What’s more, they’re shedding their inhibitions as they step into this new chapter, embracing their vulnerabilities and being unapologetically themselves.

Ahead of Eat My Dust’s release and what’s looking set to be a busy few months, we catch up with Anna Shields to find out more about this exciting new era of Dead Pony.

It’s been two years since you released Ignore This, which received a place on that year's SAY Award shortlist. How have the last couple of years been?
The last few years since releasing Ignore This have been amazing. We have progressed so much as a band and had some really cool opportunities. Some of the highlights were going on tour with You Me At Six and being part of the Justin Hawkins Rides Again tour. We also spent a lot of time working on our new music and sound!

You’ve described your new EP, Eat My Dust!, as the start of a new chapter, so I’d love to know what's inspired this fresh start and phase of renewal for Dead Pony?
Honestly I feel like Dead Pony is an ever-evolving entity and we’re constantly working on refining our sound. We had taken a bit of time out from releasing music and we knew that we wanted the next releases to signify a new beginning for us as a band.

You say you’ve pulled heavily from early 2000s influences, but are reshaping that nostalgia rather than looking back. I’d love to know who some of those early noughties influences are and what the process has been like looking to the future while dipping a toe in the past?
For me, I was a huge fan of '00s pop princesses like Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera and Nelly Furtado so I definitely pull a lot of inspiration from them in my songwriting and performance. Collectively as a band we all love Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Paramore, N.E.R.D. and The Prodigy.

I think it’s really important when you’re taking influence from a specific moment in time that you don’t imitate it because I think that’s when it can be a bit gimmicky. I have really enjoyed looking at our childhood heroes and reimagining what they would sound like if they were a band now. It’s a tribute to the past rather than mimicking it.

Freak Like Me is described as “a love letter to the outsiders in society”, drawing inspiration from The Priory Bar in Glasgow where you played some of your early gigs. I’d love to know more about that venue, what it means to the band and why you wanted to write a song about it?
When I was writing the lyrics to this song, I kept thinking about how it would sound being played in a club and then I kept thinking about the times of hanging out at The Priory when we were starting out as a band. At the time it really was the epicentre of the Glasgow music scene and Jokey, the owner, really made every person that came through the door feel like part of a community. It’s no longer a bar which is a terrible loss for Glasgow and its music scene but I’ll always remember the first gigs we ever played as a band there. It was a hub for us to grow and just be absolute freaks surrounded by other absolute freaks.

The song celebrates people being unapologetically themselves, and it feels like that energy runs through the whole EP – can you talk us through some of the other tracks on Eat My Dust!
Lost Inside of Me: We wrote this song about a moment of self-doubt and reassessing the path we were on. It’s hard to know sometimes if you’re making the right choices in life but I think that sometimes you just need to shed whatever is holding you back and trust your instincts that you’re on the right road

BOOM!: [The song] was written about this fictional post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s strange because at the time of writing it I didn’t really associate it with real life, it was more of a fantasy world we’d created. But the more I listen to it, the more the message seems to resonate with what’s going on in the world right now.

Fury: Blair had the idea for Fury actually when we were watching the BBC show Gladiators. We love that show and our favourite Gladiator is Fury. I think she’s such a fantastic role model for young girls and I love how she is just unapologetically herself. That really inspired the message of this song. Be brave, be tough, be kind and most importantly be yourself.

Eat My Dust! feels like a bold and incredibly cohesive body of work, so I find it fascinating to learn that it’s a product of you stepping outside of your comfort zone. What have you found the most challenging part about making this new EP and why?
Honestly, I think that writing this EP has been one of the least challenging bodies of work we’ve ever made. Every song just felt like it immediately fell into place and it almost felt like the songs already existed in our minds, we just had to write them down on paper. We were a bit apprehensive about how heavy some of our new music is and I guess we were worried that our fans would be scared off by it. But really our fans are absolutely loving this new era and I think they can tell that we’re having fun and being authentically ourselves.

With Eat My Dust! out this Friday, what does the rest of the year have in store for Dead Pony?
We’re playing Slam Dunk (23 & 24 May) at the end of May followed by the UK Headline Eat My Dust! Tour. We’re so excited to be touring again and playing these songs live. We’re also stoked to be playing All Points East (30 Aug, with Twenty One Pilots) along side some amazing bands and good friends.

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Eat My Dust! is released on 15 May via ADA; Dead Pony play La Belle Angele, Edinburgh, 27 May

Follow Dead Pony on Instagram @deadponyband

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