STACK NZ Jan-Feb #59

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visit MUSIC FEATURE
SUMMER EDITION 2015 JB Hi-Fi
F or years, Pond were a curiosity; a
collection of mates – some of whom
were in Tame Impala – a hazy crew of
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
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?
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.
Pond’s epic psychedelic journey through music has reached a crossroads.
Nick Allbrook talks to Jonathan Alley about Man it Feels Like Space Again.