Written by: Dave Cantrell
For a couple of reasons it’s with mild trepidation I approach the new Pond album. For one, the release is pretty quick on the heels of previous outing Hobo Rocket (released Aug, 2013, though this record was actually written before that one; crazy prolific, these lads), and for two I’m still a bit stung by the relative underwhelmingness of that record compared to the utter splash’n’dash, sunshiney glory of its breakout predecessor Beard, Wives, Denim. ‘Who knows,’ one thought then, ‘perhaps the rigors of maintaining both this band and the Tame Impala mothership was just too much to ask.’ And for the first minute of the new album those fears hover on the fulcrum as one waits for the band to signal their intent. But allow me to kill the suspense right here: Man it feels like Pond again.
After appearing at first as if it’s drunk on the gentler space pop bromides of the Flaming Lips which, frankly, was perhaps overly leaned-upon last go round, “Waiting Around For Grace” (an apt title in this context) soon eclipses itself – exactly at the one minute mark, in fact – and rides with a happy hippy whoop into luminescent pop territory, the remaining four minutes essentially one long hook, the melody a head-nodding, always-building joy, the harmonics dashing hither-thither with a blissful abandon. Way to kick it off, Pond people, and kick this record continues to do.
On follow-up track “Elvis’ Flaming Star” a great gurning and sprightly beat backbones a hand-clapping marvel of a choon, buoyed by a tight swirled ecstasy of keys and a rhythm guitar out of robot dance school, so much so this could be the Scissor Sisters hurtling through whacked-out space were it not for the trippy harpsichordy bridge we cross on twinkling, winkingly melancholic tiptoe before returning post-haste to the punch and rev and whatever singer Nick Allbrook’s on about – Elvis is mentioned, there’s a line about color-coding your old LPs – but really it hardly matters because this thing’s heavenly, I tell ya. And speaking of which…
…the romantic, aspiring drift of “Holding Out For You,” with its classic downcast tempo underscoring a pleading of organ and a guitar tone that cries plaintively to the skies every time it opens its mouth proves this band knows their way around a breaking heart as well as anyone and lays brief claim to the most beautiful song Pond have produced, soon overtaken down the tracklist by the down-home holler of “Medicine Hat” that grounds proceedings to the bountiful sanctity of earth and does so with a magnificent ease. Sounding like the Band waking up in Arthur Lee’s LA, coaxing the sunshine out of the fog and luring it north to the Canadian Rockies where it (of course) willingly goes, with a phalanx of synth horns and angel choruses rising above the treetops, the track’s just about the sublimest thing to hit these pages since Northern Arms wandered in late last spring.
But don’t go thinking that the psych varieties don’t beckon here. They do, illustriously so.
“Heroic Short” is a spooky dark melange that feels more psych ward than psychedelic, shadowy and tense and not meant for polite consumption. And this is something particularly admirable about Pond, that they can apply themselves with deft versatility across the mood spectrum, understanding that, yes Virginia, nightmares can occur amid the bright kaleidoscopes and multi-colored carousels. Then there’s the psyched-out funk-o-rama of “Outside Is the Right Side” that surprises and unconditionally delights and suddenly that ‘mothership’ mention up top is giddily germaine, this piece hitting a crazy wah-wah groove and growing an acid-tinged afro right before your eyes ears, which isn’t even to mention the solo halfway through tearin’ the roof off the muthasuckah. Oh, and can I give a ‘Whoa! Damn, man!’ shout out here to drummer (and Tame Impala member) Jay Watson, whose playing is stellar throughout but on “Outside..” is so inside it punches a new hole in the known universe. Masterclass stuff.
Finally, with an explorer’s heart and a wandering but on-point core – which is Pond in a phrase – the closing title track roams at length through fields of proggy texture and rolling sonic mayhem with playful curtsies and a dreamlike playground spirit. ‘Sprawling’ might be a word, ‘uniquely focused’ might be a couple more. The type track one imagines being a centerpiece of the band’s live set, it also – as does this whole record – crystallizes the Pond identity while placing them indisputably near the bulls-eye center of the seven levels of modern-day psych. I say it again: Man it feels like Pond again. Believe.
