Even if you’re from the most insular, incestuous musical scene in the most isolated city on the planet, people will still stand up and take notice if the music you make is as good as POND’s. Now the world will get to experience the band’s new album, Man It Feels Like Space Again – their most striking statement to date.
Hailing from Perth, Australia, POND formed in 2008 as an all-inclusive, ego-free collective spawned from numerous other interlocked bands and projects: Mink Mussel Creek, Allbrook/Avery, and Tame Impala. Over a couple of months Nick, Joe, Jay, Jamie, Lukas, Cam and a parade of friends and well-wishers cobbled together a mountain of tape that was stitched up to become POND’s sixth studio album.
Man It Feels Like Space Again lives up to the inherent wonder in its title, a sweeping collection of warm, warped psychedelic gems. It brings to mind the work of The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, mid-‘70s Lennon, MGMT, Todd Rundgren, Supergrass and any number of other genre-hopping sonic/space-explorers.
In its 45 minutes, the album covers an extraordinary amount of ground. Opener ‘Waiting Around For Grace’ sounds like an FM pop hit beamed in from a nearby planet, all wonky propulsion and giddy hooks – the perfect opening blast. Lead single, ‘Elvis’ Flaming Star’ stomps like a ‘70s glam band coached by Bowie, before collapsing into and out of a mid-tune daydream.
Elsewhere on the record there are blissed-out ballads (‘Sitting Up On Our Crane’, ‘Holding Out For You’), twisted, futuristic raves (‘Zond’), lysergic epics drenched in reverb (‘Heroic Shart’), and the gorgeous 6/8 classic ‘Medicine Hat’.
By the time you hit the finale: the out-of-control, ever-shifting eight-minute title track, it definitely feels like space… again, man.