By Cherry Williams
Fremantle, Australia’s five-piece Pond reveals the elastic-hipped Robo-funk new single “America’s Cup” and the track’s accompanying video. Alongside the reveal, the band announces the release of their 9th studio album 9, available October 1.
“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 its 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.
Photo Credit: Matsu
Featuring “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. 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. 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 lens for viewing our past,” says Allbrook on the album.
9 is available for pre-order in digital formats as well as multiple color options in 12” vinyl, CD, and cassette. 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 presale offer from 9:00 am Wednesday 26 May. General public tickets on sale from 9:00 am Friday 28 May on pond.band.