So I was at the Gimpel Fils gallery in Mayfair at the private view of the Lucy Stein and Shana Moulton exhibition. I was standing outside, knocking back my free champagne and trying to ponce a cigarette, when Edward walked out. “I’m bored as a turtle,” he said matter-of-factly.

I thought about turtles and their world-weary ways. Then I thought about the exhibition and realised that Edward was right.

I’m sure the analogy has been made before, but art is a little like cocaine. Not because the dealers of both industries frequently charge unfair amounts of money for pretty shitty stuff, but because both seem to inspire the desire in people to talk massive amounts of shit. So it was refreshing to meet such a straight up chap.

“You're not that impressed with the art?” I asked. “It’s quite interesting,” he replied, “especially the naked people in that picture over there.” It was true - the naked people were pretty good. “I’m not sure about the stuff downstairs though. I think the lady in the video might be drunk.” Then Edward wandered back into the gallery, lay face-down on the floor and made some very convincing fart impressions.

Not long after his mum took him home. He was tired and had school the next day so I suppose it was only fair. But it confirmed my opinion that the only people worth listening to when it comes to art are children under the age of 11 or complete outsiders.

Edward lies face down and makes fart impressions

It was a good thing then that we also had Pull Tiger Tail with us at the exhibition. Marcus, Davo and Jack all went to Goldsmiths, but they were all outsiders. Davo studied politics and Marcus got his face stuck into English. Jack did study design but that’s a little more “vocational” as your dad might say. “None of us were really part of the gang,” Davo told me a little forlornly. “We were ostracised.”

Jack, Davo and Marcus and the free champagne

And thank fuck for that... As we wandered around the exhibition the boys kept their opinions and observations brief and unpretentious. Like pillow talk, conversations about art should be kept sparing - too much detail can spoil the mood.

The Lucy Stein work upstairs was mostly figurative oil paintings and drawings with many incorporating collages of magazine cut-outs, make up and cigarette butts. Recurring themes were female sexuality and anxiety. Marcus observed that: "It seems like she's a bit obsessed with being a woman," which kind of summed things up. The paintings were good though and overall I enjoyed the Lucy Stein work.

God is Dead (Fakers) by Lucy Stein

Downstairs things took an awkward turn. The Shana Moulton piece consisted of a large projection screen showing what looked like a no-budget YouTube home movie about a woman who typed too much on her computer, got wrist ache, went to see a spiritual healer, took some mind altering substances and then danced about a lot in the woods. The last twenty minutes of the film were a bit like the Oh My Gosh video from Man Like Me… except a lot more shit. Shana jumps around the place in a forest, wearing a blue-screen suit with trippy fractals and Mandelbrot Sets projected onto it.

At the end an equation flashed up on the screen. It was all about chaos and the recurring patterns of nature… I got it.

The boys pass judgement

In order to fill the uncomfortable silence with something I did a little interviewing. It was a good time to catch the band - as they hover somewhere on that precarious plateau between success and… well, not success.

Clearly there is some quite serious heat around them right now. They seem to have a lot of friends on Myspace at any rate. And their music works - a more poppy Klaxons sound to put it in a disrespectfully oversimplified box. And, perhaps most importantly, they are signed to B-Unique who also have the Kaiser Chiefs and… erm… The Twang on their musical menu.

And it’s all happened in a rather short space of time. Although the boys grew up together in Warwickshire, the band was only formed in 2005. But then, a bit like Shana's artwork, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. There are Job-Centre-loads of good bands that disappear from the brink of stardom with out a trace, like… erm… and, erm… to name but a few.

But I think most are getting the feeling that this won’t be the fate of Pull Tiger Tail. The boys quit their last year of uni to become pop superstars and it doesn’t seem too likely that they’ll be going back… unless its as part of some genius reality show where celebrities return to complete the educations they abandoned for a taste of fame.

Eventually we had to leave when Shana Moulton arrived in person and began a live performance of her fractal forest dancing. We escaped upstairs but by this time there were only lost looking old people left - establishment types going "fwar fwar" between gulps of champagne. I searched for someone small to talk to but was out of luck.

Old people

Thankfully though the PTT boys remained un-phased by the artistic pretensions that criss-crossed the room like lasers in a high security bank vault. Its the same approach that the boys take with their music. "We're not about trends and trying to fit into a certain scene. We're all about having fun and just doing what we want," said Davo. "We try to avoid over analysis in our songs." I think Edward would approve.

Check out the PTT Myspace to see the video for Hurricanes which was released in June. Also go and see the boys down at SE One Club on 29 Sept at the Insomniacs Ball.

Photographs by Oli Longmore