Pond Release Tenth Studio Album 'Stung!'
STREAM NOW
INCLUDING LEAD TRACK “CONSTANT PICNIC”
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED FOR FALL 2024
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
With special guest Fazerdaze
11.12.24 - Royale - Boston, MA
11.13.24 - Brooklyn Steel - Brooklyn, NY
11.14.24 - Union Transfer - Philadelphia, PA
11.16.24 - 9:30 Club - Washington, DC
11.17.24 - Mr. Smalls Theatre - Pittsburgh, PA
11.19.24 - Danforth Music Hall - Toronto, ON
11.20.24 - St. Andrew’s Hall - Detroit, MI
11.22.24 - Vic Theatre - Chicago, IL
11.23.24 - First Avenue - Minneapolis, MN
11.28.24 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC
11.29.24 - Neptune Theatre - Seattle, WA
11.30.24 - Revolution Hall - Portland, OR
12.3.24 - The Warfield - San Francisco, CA
12.5.24 - The Wiltern - Los Angeles, CA
UK/EU TOUR:
With special guest Barbagallo
9.24.24 Papillon - Southampton, UK
9.26.24 - Gorilla - Manchester, UK
9.27.24 - The Wardrobe - Leeds, UK
9.28.24 - The Grove - Newcastle, UK
9.29.24 - King Tut’s Wah Wah - Glasgow, UK
10.1.24 - XOYO Birmingham - Birmingham, UK
10.2.24 - Thekla - Bristol, UK
10.3.24 - Electric Ballroom - London, UK
10.5.24 - La Trabendo - Paris, FR
10.6.24 - La Grand Salon, Botanique - Brussels, BE
10.7.24 - Paradiso - Amsterdam, NL
10.8.24 - Bürgerhaus Stollwerck - Cologne, DE
10.10.24 - Hole44 - Berlin, DE
10.11.24 - Fabrik - Hamburg, DE
10.13.24 - Vega - Copenhagen, DK
AUS TOUR:
6.27.24 - Lion Arts Factory - Adelaide, SA with/ Coldwave
6.28.24 - Northcote Theatre - Melbourne, VIC with/ Parsnip
6.29.24 - The Princess Theatre - Brisbane, QLD with/ Full Flower Moon Band
7.6.24 - Freo.Social - Fremantle, WA with/ Gia Como
Beloved Australian five-piece Pond have released their anticipated tenth studio album, Stung! via Spinning Top Records today, including the poignant lead track “Constant Picnic.” The album is available digitally and on 180g 2LP “Bee” Splatter vinyl. Stream the album or order your vinyl copy here.
The record comes as the band is midway through an Australian tour which has been receiving high praise from media and fans alike, with the prolific psych-rockers road testing some of the new tracks throughout their explosive and entrancing live show. The band will bring the show to North America this fall, all dates can be found below and tickets are on sale now via pond.band.
The album’s moving opener “Constant Picnic” started as a touching demo from band-member James Ireland, which inspired vocalist Nick Allbrook to write chorus lyrics. “Gum built it up with some new beautiful chords in the verse and it sort of grew as things do.” explains Allbrook. “This song is about all the ways we deceive ourselves. In love, climate, history, we find it hard to face up to the truth and suffer terribly for it. The title is from the Australian gastronomic classic One Continuous Picnic by Michael Symons. It outlines how Australia as a nation never had a peasant class and so never developed a national cuisine through engagement with the land and soils. We are tethered to the Union Jack and carry around our rations (sugar tea mutton flour - also a line in “Black Lung”) despite its incompatibility with, and destructive influence on the environment. The phrase ‘Constant picnic’ echoed others like, “the lucky country” and “endless summer” that are all part of the myths we tell ourselves to feel better. “The curtains falling but at least I’m dumber” - even at the final act we prefer to just self-medicate or lie. It’s a bit complicated because we do just want to be happy.”
As versatile and inquisitive as ever, Stung! features some of Pond’s most glorious rock songs yet as well as some of their least rock moments, all psychedelic drapery or funk vim. The wonderfully sprawling record moves with verve and aplomb as Pond turns unexpected musical corners. There are brilliant bursts of power-pop, such as “Last Elvis,” wonderfully warped by the flourishes of keyboardist Jamie Terry. Written in LA, the track is about the last few people on Earth - an Elvis impersonator, the Idea or Spirit of David Beckham and a tradie having a smoke break.
“This just became a movie in my head which was probably exaggerated by moving around Los Angeles without a car, going through all the desolation and inequality that, especially on cloudy days, looks post-apocalyptic.” says Albrook. “I suppose the hollowness and comedy of celebrity was on my mind, which is why these weird caricatures of celebrities became the main characters of this song.”
There are lumbering rock songs with cowbell (“Black Lung”), crisp guitar tunes like “Boys Don’t Crash” with its sharp riff and sidewinding variations, droning organs and distorted bass (“Edge of the World Pt. 3”), the delightful see-saw of initial single “Neon River”, shifting between gossamer spans of acoustic beauty and slicing, shout-out-loud paroxysms that suggest Led Zeppelin in trim fighting form. Recent release “So Lo” is a sizzling bit of art-house funk, New York cool and Berlin brutalism recombined in a giddy romp of existential Antipodean escapism, while title track “(I’m) Stung” was described by Consequence as “warm and whimsical”. Stung! is a spirited road map of Pond’s collected enthusiasms, and above all, a fun record. Few bands have the skills and experience to sound this confident; they do not shy away from any of it.
Stung! speaks to our collective modern paradox of being disappointed in or even disconsolate over a world that we know more about than any prior generation but also being in awe of it and (sometimes) each other, too. There are so many reasons to cry and so many reasons to marvel. Can’t they all, Pond suggests with Stung!, be reasons to sing?
While the last four Pond albums have been showcases of tidiness and brevity, 10 ideas always tucked into 40 minutes or so, Stung! sees the band gleefully, madly and wilfully lean into double-LP largesse, tapping the spirit of Tusk and Sign ‘O’ the Times by funneling 14 songs into the most unfettered and splendid hour of their recording career. A band for the better part of two decades, Pond has accepted (with no small joy or relief) that they are no longer beholden to shifting expectations of cool. That idea has empowered them, allowing them to play precisely what they want, to not move toward any goal but being themselves.
It takes more effort for Pond to make a record these days—not musically, of course, but logistically. They’re all adults with relationships, children, professions, hobbies, side-projects, or some mix of them all. Allbrook and Jay Watson, or GUM, both released solo albums last year, and GUM will release a collaborative full-length album with Ambrose Kenny-Smith (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Murlocs) mid-2024. They began making Stung! in piecemeal fashion, then, a member or two showing up at the little studio in Watson’s back yard to work on a new idea. They’d tinker joyously and endlessly in Watson’s little workshop, trying a panoply of machines and widgets to get the most interesting sounds. What’s more, they were able to let the songs they had sit over time, so that Pond’s deeply democratic process could not only siphon and improve the best ones but also tease out what they might be missing for this very full double-record.
At last, they realized they ran the risk of being stuck in this phase—creation, adjustment, addition—forever. The whole quintet decamped to Dunsborough, the scenic surfing hub on Australia’s southwestern coast where a friend had recently finished a spacious and state-of-the-art studio. Allbrook would run near the shore each morning. They’d all swim during the day, then record until deep in the night. They left most of their ancillary gear at home, forcing them to drill down on the songs, ideas and sounds they already had, to make them better without getting carried away in endless possibility. After all, after nearly a year of writing and workshopping, they had plenty of material, the makings of a set more expansive than any previous Pond album.
The title Stung! began as a joke in Pond, a reference to having a crush on someone or something that they began to use so often they simply had to make it the name. They still laugh when they hear it now, a silly inside wisecrack suddenly open to the outside world. But it’s kind of a credo, too: despite the bruises, the callousness, and the suffering, they remain stung with music, with the idea of making songs that feel just so and doing it together, as friends. And they are stung with the world, too, even when it bites back. “Well, I’m stung/the bells been rung,” Allbrook sings during the winning title track. “If love’s a game, then I guess you won.” Ten albums in, though, Pond seem to be having more fun playing now than ever before.
