Man It Fees Like Space Again Album Cover
A few months ago, I praised the ongoing psych-pop revival currently happening in Australia – bands in all the major metropolises (and numerous small towns) playing the sort of wonky, experimental, fuzzy, sparkling, multi-faceted, stoner rock music and then love of early on Pink Floyd, 70s Todd Rundgren and even the balls-out boogie of Australian pioneers Coloured Balls.
I honed in on iii bands, mainly: Brisbane'south summery John Steel Singers, the woozy rhythms of Blank Realm and the monstrous pop groove of Tame Impala.
I omitted to mention the fantastic fun-speckled splendour and collective vision of Pond, all the same – a grievous oversight equally Pond are front, left and centre of the Australian psych-popular scene, equally the gluttonous sprawl of their 6th studio album, Man it Feels Like Space Once again, proves.
The anthology was recorded over several months in a small studio in Collingwood, Melbourne – where several band members slept crude – and information technology sounds similar it. Not in a bad manner, just in the sense of freedom that permeates songs such as the fantastically catchy space stone opener, Waiting Around For Grace, a bit similar the Flaming Lips back in the mid-90s, before they became irritating.
Or Tame Impala themselves.
Indeed, the two bands are so entwined that sometimes Pond are downgraded as a Tame Impala adjunct. That's not quite fair: if anything, it's the other way round. Not simply do the bands share a audio and a city (Perth), they also share members – when Nick Allbrook left Tame Impala a couple of years back to concentrate on Pond and other projects, he was replaced by some other fellow member of Pond. (There's only i member of Tame Impala who hasn't been in Pond.)
The truth of the matter though is that the two bands are distinct entities. Core member Joseph Ryan explained the differences to United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland publication The Stool Pigeon thus: "Kevin [Parker, Tame Impala frontman] writes pretty much all the Tame songs. Jay [Watson], Nick and I write all the Swimming songs. Kevin likes to get everyone in Tame playing the correct riffs and chords whereas Pond are [far looser]... Kevin has long, directly pilus and I accept a white-male child 'fro. To my ears, Tame and Pond sound completely different."
It's tempting to think of Swimming as the more than unruly, dorky, incestuous lovers of Tame Impala – non for them their concerns about hitting the aforementioned note twice or strait-jacketing their songs into recognisable structures. And while the main unmarried Elvis' Flaming Star may share much of the same, wonderfully exhilarant 70s-era glam stomp as Elephant (think Marc Bolan transported to a futuristic earth populated by D'Angelo fans), elsewhere it'southward non so straightforward.
Explosions, unearthly sound effects, trippy percussion and quintuple-tracked vocals populate the album. The synths on the title rail fizzle and oomph similar a less together MGMT before setting off in some other direction altogether. Sitting Up On Our Crane croons mournfully to itself like UK cult band Telly Personalities in their psych phase, or perhaps John Lennon in one of his more indulgent moments (and there were plenty of those). Holding Out For You, meanwhile, is the sort of graceful slide through cloud-baiting childhood fantasyland and psychedelia that makes me however miss Mercury Rev and then very much.
It's non all wonderment and wigged-out head trips, though. Sometimes the indulgence becomes likewise overbearing, and yous showtime wishing Pond would return to planet earth, if just for a moment. Zond is a bit of a downer, and Outside Is the Right Side is far too in thrall to George Clinton's surreal funk band Parliament Funkadelic to bear repeated listens.
Medicine Lid as well is worryingly straight – Ryan crooning nasally as the band play plodding country stone, a lilliputian like Bob Dylan with the Band behind him. It's ok by itself, but one hopes this is a one-off aberration, not a future direction. Australia already has any number of bands that sound like this, but simply one Pond.
That's fine though – you have to expect a petty uneveness from such a deranged and schizo ring. Indulgent and trippy and sometimes off-kilter – simply a whole heap of fun. And they make marvellous spaced-out videos, as well.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/jan/23/pond-man-it-feels-like-space-again-indulgent-trippy-and-at-times-off-kilter
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