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07
Given the ascension of Pond internationally,
it’s little wonder Allbrook left his old band:
Pond supported Arctic Monkeys on a sojourn
through UK arenas in 2014, and played major
festivals Primavera (Spain and Portugal) and
Field Day (UK). All this after the NME called
them ‘the hottest band in the world’, which is both
a blessing and a curse.
“The British music press is a fire-breathing
chimera,” he remonstrates, breathing out more
than just a little. “I didn’t even realise what was
stressing me out so much, when we went back.
I was feeling really nervous and scared. I didn’t
want people to see me, I’d got that in my head
that everyone had this sort of weird image of
Pond as that. We all changed pretty quickly
and, you know, I certainly am not the same
person who was in that band who got awarded
‘the hottest new band’.
Allbrook, while having grown up in Western
Australia, isn’t a Perth native and thus a city boy;
far from it. Allbrook grew up in Derby, in far flung
North-West climes of WA, closer to the Timor
Sea than the Indian Ocean; a scant and scabrous
collection of streets inland from the ocean, where
music was hard to come by. Allbrook grew up in
a headspace of the far away places of Australia
few in the world really know, and as he gets older,
despite his prolific work rate, he’s beginning to
wonder what it all means.
“I’ve lost that head-in-the-sand, balls-out-of
your-fly-confidence,“ he admits. “I’m thinking more
stupid old paranoid person things: you know, ‘what
it means’. What is my point as a homo sapien?
Should I be burrowing around naked in a forest? Or
should I be helping the world? Or is the world not
worth being helped? Have we cast ourselves into
the fire already?”
Don’t be fooled by Pond’s trippy visage and
space-trawling vibe: they’re hard workers – see
the six albums in seven years for starters. But
maybe that’s a sign of the times – everything is
faster, the media cycle amplified tenfold by social
media, the globalisation of information, not just
economies, cutting the 15 minutes of fame down
to 15 seconds.
Allbrook concurs. ”When the flow of thought
gets to such a speed that the hurricane of
information collapses in on itself, does it go
to some sort of singularity? Or does it all just
ter out again?”
Man It Feels Like Space Again
Pond is released January 23 via
I/Universal. Pond play St Jerome’s
neway Festival 2015: more at
ewayfestival.com
Does the cover of ‘Man it Feels Like Space
Again’ look vaguely familiar?
In 1968, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with one Janis Joplin
on vocals) released the album Cheap Thrills.The band had posed naked
in bed together for a cover, but it was rejected by their record company.
The solution lay in the underground comic art of Robert Crumb (Joplin
was an avid fan), whose graphic illustration went down in history as
one of the greatest album covers ever designed. In Ben Montero’s 2015
homage that graces the cover of Man It Feels Like Space Again, hair,
gurus and walking digits are replaced with space travellers, pollution,
radiation, stargazers …and Elvis, of course.
Waiting Around
for Grace
It’s only track one and we’re traversing
the galaxy in a clapped out cardboard
cut-out space cruiser, avoiding bad
trouble, but ensuring there’s plenty
of the good kind on offer. Kooky keys,
it’s shimmery in all the best places
and bright spots.
Elvis’ Flaming Star
Southern rock of the stratospheres,
this is fried chicken and beer for the
soul; stompin’ and ready to fly, it’s a
funked-up hop through a Presley solar
system. Bring back Elvis, indeed!
Heroic Shart
A woozy, phased out, shimmering
wobble that threatens to fall apart
completely at times, but always manages
to snake off in yet another fascinating
direction. Hits full propulsion by the end.
Man It Feels Like
Space Again
The album closer is a few songs in one:
it begins as a vaguely Beatle-esque
rummage around the basement, then
sprouts out of the ground for some
vaguely reflective, psychedelic whimsy
and exploration. Dispensing with a
vaguely Floydian sheen, it hits the
straps and slows again once it hits
the eight minute mark.