Ahead of their Australian shows next month, and fresh off a run of US tour dates including a performance at Kilby Court Festival, the fabulous Pond has released another off their forthcoming tenth studio album ‘Stung!’, out Friday 21 June via Spinning Top Records.
‘So Lo’ is a glorious slice of high-stepping funk that positively sizzles like bacon on a hot griddle. The up tempo track is laden with splashing guitars, ambulant bass and squeaking synths The single comes with an animated facial capture visualizer, by Alejandro Crawford who also worked with Pond on the video for their quintessential track ‘Paint Me Silver’.
Pond’s Nick Allbrook says of the track:
I think Gum was just messing around on guitar playing something fun and cheesy and then realized it could be cool in a kind of cold, concrete, No-Wave way. I wrote the line about white dreads while waiting for a bus in Tottenham – maybe there were some hippies around, maybe there weren’t, who can really say where hippies are or aren’t at any given time… The words were “all these tablets got me breaking in two” but when I first double tracked the vocals they were a bit out of time and gum thought I said, “these tummy tablets got me breaking in two” which made us laugh, and thus, by the laws of Pond, became official. Some of the lyrics are sad honestly, about watching your future as you’d imagined it evaporate before your eyes – being haunted by “a child as brittle as paper”. Gum thought I was saying “horny badger, brittle as paper” but that was a bridge too far, even for us. This song sort of skirts between being horrendously bleak and really dumb. The vocoder Gin and Gum put on “so European” absolutely kills me.”
It’s a track that pours unadulterated sunshine into the ears:
‘So Lo’ is out today and available to download and stream here. Get down and get funky.
Pond have just wrapped up a run of make-up tour dates in the USA and are now preparing to bring their live show home, kicking off their anticipated Australian tour at Sydney’s Carriageworks on Friday 14 June before playing Hobart, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle. The band recently announced the exciting support acts that will be joining them at each show, including Delivery (Sydney), 208L Containers (Hobart), Coldwave (Adelaide), Parsnip (Melbourne), Full Flower Moon Band (Brisbane) and Gia Como (Fremantle). Tickets on sale now at here.
The band announce an extensive North American album tour with support from the brilliant New Zealand musician, Fazerdaze. Starting in Boston on 12 November and making stops in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, DC, Toronto, San Francisco, LA and more. This follows a fifteen-date run of UK/Europe throughout September and October. All tour dates and ticket details can be found here.
Feature Photograph: Michael Tartaglia
