POND Drop New Album ‘Terrestrials’
Pond released their much anticipated new album Terrestrials, out now via their own newly coined imprint Mangovision via Secretly Distribution. LISTEN + PURCHASE HERE.
Along with the album, the focus track Skyworks is available to stream now. The song explores the complicated history of Australia Day and the juxtaposition of public celebrations against the painful history behind its origin. Nick Allbrook spoke on the new song saying “The skyworks happen every year on the day Australia was invaded and claimed by the crown. They explode over the river in a gaudy display of drunkenness and patriotism, sponsored by the Lotto. We love a flutter. The river is bejewelled with magical glittering lights, and loud bangs that remind some of canons and muskets. The river is ablaze, magic, filthy, like a Hieronymus Bosch picture, strewn with bottles and shit in the morning. It’s a confusing time for a confused people. Joe Ryan wrote the main chord progression for this one and then it grew in weird ways.”
The group, which consists of Nick Allbrook, Jay Watson, Joe Ryan, Jamie Terry, and James Ireland, exist to create – the myriad of crossovers between their projects individually and the scene they first put on the map continues today – and that pursuit is set to persist forever no doubt. Yet for the first time in Pond’s history, the recording process on their 11th was subject to a simple set of rules: No fuzz pedal. No ballads. No “Pink Floyd shit”.
Conceived from a place of reverence for a particularly potent epoch in Oz rock, Terrestrials mines the sound of open sky melancholia, heat haze sizzling on the plains and jangly pub backrooms that hits an eternally poignant nerve for anyone familiar with the sound, time and place. conic 80s Australiana being acid-washed with the eyeliner-stained post-punk of Sisters Of Mercy, Magazine and the like.
Like much of the Pond catalogue, Terrestrials is a record of people and place, of exploring the identity of each, as well as where and how they intersect and interact. Extractive capitalism, power dynamics, inequality, indigenous incarceration, eccentric outcasts, fire and water, diesel and dust, unity and division, blood and bauxite, unborn tomorrows and dead yesterdays – it’s all there. Terrestrials twitches with the desperation of people and planet on the brink, but ultimately bets on the beauty of both to prevail.
The album is released on the heels of a headline North American tour and run of dates with Djo including New York’s Forest Hills Stadium. Overnight Terrestrials received its live debut at SoundMerch alongside an all new live set prior to Pond taking to Against The Grain Festival in Brisbane this weekend. The band will take to Second Rodeo West End tonight for a free, celebratory album signing and DJ set, alongside a hometown celebration at Mills Records in Fremantle on the 25th. See all dates and ticket details below.
POND IN-STORES / AUS TOUR DATES
Fri 19 Jun – Second Rodeo West End (DJ set + signing) – Meanjin / Brisbane, QLD [FREE]
Sat 20 Jun – Against the Grain Festival – Magandjin / Brisbane, QLD
Thu 25 Jun – Mills Records (DJ set + signing) – Walyalup / Fremantle, WA [FREE]
Terrestrials LP is out now, buy/stream it here.
LP TRACKLIST
Skyworks
Casuarina
Through The Heather
Two Hands
Roebuck Plains
The Fatal Shore
Tourmaline
Terrestrials
Personal Hell
Nashville (I’m Dying)
