STACK NZ Jan-Feb #59

MUSIC

FEATURE

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Pond’s epic psychedelic journey through music has reached a crossroads. Nick Allbrook talks to Jonathan Alley about Man it Feels Like Space Again .

F or years, Pond were a curiosity; a

While Allbrook has now departed the ranks of Tame Impala for good, it’s plain to see there’s no acrimony with main man Kevin Parker. The Tame Impala singer helped produce Pond’s debut Psychedelic Mango , and lent his ears – and now considerable production skills – to Man It Feels Like Space Again . But why did Allbrook feel the need to break away? “That touring lifestyle is easy. If you’re a paranoid, overly moral type of person like me, you get terrified every day about how dumb and dependant you’re getting,” he reflects quietly. ”If you’re more of a happy-go-lucky-person it would be, ‘great, I don’t have to think about shit anymore, I know my purpose, my purpose is being dangled right in front of me. All I have to do is that one thing: I don’t have enough time to feel bad about not doing other stuff, because this is all I can do.’ But that started freaking the hell out of me.” And has the change been for the good? “It’s just nice for a while having large tracks of time when I could actually think about long projects and long changes. I could move somewhere, I could start painting a picture in my room, or set-up a whole pile of books,” he replies evenly.

collection of mates – some of whom were in Tame Impala – a hazy crew of

it’s such a sort of bizarre, ugly, hilarious and interesting creature,” Allbrook tells STACK during a holiday sojourn on the Victorian southern coast. “It’s some sort of Doctor Moreau’s Island experiment of three people’s babies, whereas Kevin’s – Tame Impala – is a pretty, golden-haired baby.” Basing themselves in Melbourne for a few months, Allbrook and his bandmates created an ever-evolving sonic trip, a journey, a flight from innerspace to outer reaches that laid a lot of the music business madness demons of the preceding years to rest. Pond knew what they wanted when they started: inevitably, everything changed as the album evolved; such things are simply wont to happen in the world of Pond. Should I be burrowing around naked in a forest? Or should I be helping the world? Or is the world not worth being helped?

psyched up music tragics that deeply loved the trip they were taking but no had idea where the ride ended. But after the release of 2012’s Beards, Wives, Denim and frontman Nick Allbrook’s later departure from Tame Impala, things got serious. Pond, in their trippy, vaguely offbeat and resoundingly passionate way, have become a Very Serious Deal Indeed. Pond have been remarkably prolific – they’ve created six full studio albums since 2008 (the internationally released Beard, Wives, Denim whipped the UK music press into a frenzy), all the way being involved in other bands (Tame Impala and Mink Mussel Creek for starters). Some of them hail from Perth, Western Australia – a city notorious for its isolation, but a town with quite the musical legacy; it clings tenuously to the tract of arable land between the Indian Ocean and the massive Nullabor Plain. It’s hatched its share of earth- shakers – including The Scientists, Hoodoo Gurus, The Triffids, and more lately The Drones. “We have multiple babies, and we’ve grafted them together to make Pond, and that’s why

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