Today, Pond announces the release of their ninth studio album 9, available October 1 via Spinning Top Records / Secretly Distribution. Alongside the news, Fremantle, Australia’s five-piece reveal the elastic-hipped robo-funk new single “America’s Cup” and the track’s accompanying video. “The beat makes me think of a New York street strut, Sesame Street style,” says frontman Nick Allbrook of the single. “But it’s about Fremantle before Alan Bond gave the big ball of gentrification it’s final shove, when it was cheap and harsh and the broken relics of the pre-87 port city were young, groovy cats in a secret idyll wedged between the river and the sea. It’s also about blokes being different versions of whatever the hell we’ve been taught we’re supposed to be.”
Take a bid on the oldest trophy in international sport on the visual accompaniment, directed by longtime collaborator Kristofski. “I’m from NZ and the big Sail race was here, the whole country was glued to their TV’s and I don’t even wanna know how much they spent on that thing” says Kristofski. “So I thought it would be funny if the captain of the racing team won the cup and auctioned it off to a bunch of people who love that kinda thing. Then he celebrates by dancing. Pretty twisted idea but i think it works,” he adds.
Featuring the aforementioned “America’s Cup” and lead track “Pink Lunettes”, on 9, Pond recaptures an anarchic sense of uncertainty and fly closer than ever before to the creative supernova that has blazed across so much of the band’s music.
“We sort of gave ourselves permission to make something stuffed this time. We’d settled into a pretty tight routine with the last few albums and wanted to shake a boat with this so we started off with filling a few tape reels with some absolutely heinous improvised sonic babble which, after much sifting, became the first few songs of the album. We also wanted to up the tempo. The last few albums have a neat little mantra or repetitive theme. If I was forced to find something like that in 9, I guess it would be ‘biography’ or ‘observation’ – a lot of the lyrics seem to focus on single people’s lives, or the lives of small moments or small things when you zoom real close up and they reveal something deeper. Stuff like my cheap Chinese slippers, or a soiled teddy bear, or Agnes Martin (not to put them in the same category, although maybe Agnes would’ve appreciated it). In the Rorschach test of re-reading lyrics, one thing that sticks out is a fixation on leaving behind a time of golden optimism and uncynical abandon. We can’t look at ourselves the same anymore, and the world we’ve built provides a scary lense for viewing our past,” muses Allbrook on the album.
Produced by Pond and mixed by Jay Watson and James Ireland, on 9, Pond’s explorations are funnelled into electrifying bursts of pure psych pop joy. No tune even veers past the five minute mark. Above all though, what you get from 9 is a sense of creative abandon and just plain fun. 9 is available for pre-order in digital formats as well as multiple color options in 12” vinyl, CD and cassette viapondband.ffm.to/nine
Next month, Pond will play a run of dates in Australia with Methyl Ethel. Pre-order 9 from Pond’s official store to access the Melbourne and Sydney tour pre-sale offer from 9:00am Wednesday 26 May. General public tickets on sale @ 9:00am Friday 28 May from pond.band.
About Pond
Originally formed in the turn of the 2010’s, as “a Royal Trux-cum-Cream power trio,” fronted by Allbrook with Jay Watson and Joe Ryan, Pond added Jamie Terry shortly afterwards, with James Ireland later rounding out the irrepressible five-piece. Ever prolific, Pond boasts an impressive eight studio albums in their ever expanding repertoire. 2019 was a milestone year for the one-of-a-kind collective with the release of their most critically acclaimed album to date, Tasmania. The LP debuted at #15 on the ARIA album chart and #2 on the AIR independent chart.
Pond possesses an ever-expanding performance resumé, having toured with Arctic Monkeys, MGMT,Flaming Lips. They have stunned at premiere musical festivals around the world includingGlastonbury, Coachella, Primavera, Bonnaroo, Reading and Leeds, The Governors Ball, South by Southwest, St Jerome’s Laneway, Splendour in the Grass and more, and have sold out countless venues around the globe from New York’s Bowery Ballroom to Paris’ La Gaite Lyrique and London’s O2 Forum.
