POND: SPLASHING OUT ON TASMANIA
Australian proggers team up with Tame Impala’s frontman on eighth album.
Pond, the sibling band of Tame Impala with several shared members past and present, will release Tasmania on March 1 via Marathon Artists — and frontman Nick Allbrook says it marks an accidental repurposing of their music that started with 2017’s The Weather.
“I always wrote a lot of the lyrics, but I don’t know if I’d tried as hard,” Allbrook tells Prog, revealing he was inspired by local culture and history to consider the future of humanity in an increasingly tense global situation. He cites the example of his home town of Perth, which he says can be seen as a “tropical holiday destination — but when the nostalgia is stripped away, there’s massive wealth disparity, alcoholism and climate change.”
The music remains as experimental, eclectic and surprising as ever, with lead track Daisy appearing to hint at Sgt. Pepper’s-era Beatles along with Joe Strummer-style vocalising, set against an 80s pop background. “I love the more sensitive-sounding Clash — Lost In The Supermarket crushed me,” Allbrook notes.
He prefers to avoid entertaining expectations for Tasmania — produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker — and plays down the idea that Pond are becoming a voice for a generation, saying he just wants to move away from “this image of rock’n’roll nostalgia we hold on to, which is really quite destructive. It’s a move towards responsibility as reality sets in; but I have no desire to go into a world I don’t feel happy in.”
Tour dates will be announced at www.pondband.net.