Pond - Stung! Review
Pond continue to tick every box of their well worn brand of pop psych, but struggle to add anything new into the mix.
What do they put in the water in Australia? That’s the question I asked myself when counting the albums released by the current members of Pond since the group released their debut, Psychedelic Mango, in 2009. In 15 years, via the band and solo projects, they have collectively released 23 albums - an impressive feat of productivity that calls to mind the staggering output of fellow Aussie psych lords King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard who themselves have released 28 records in just 13 years, and that’s not counting side projects! But whereas King Gizzard’s catalogue covers just about every genre of music going - from death metal to synth pop, the members of Pond instead opt to try to perfect their brand of 70’s influenced psych. Across their projects their sound may swing closer to rock, sometimes closer to pop, but it always carries a signature whacky groove and a certain kind of sunburnt sadness.
It is therefore no surprise that Pond’s latest effort, Stung!, is packed with fuzz filled guitars and synths with pop sensibilities. There are plenty of songs like opener ‘Constant Picnic’ - songs whose languid chords and pitter-patter of drums make them sound like they should be listened to while cloud watching on a sunny day, and songs like ‘Sunrise for the Body’, ‘OV-Rays’ and ‘Stars In Silken Sheets’ - the softly softly acoustic guitar numbers that melt away like sugar paper sinks into the tongue. Giant, chunky riffs are splattered throughout. Just about every song on this album could reasonably be categorised as catchy.
But the problem that Pond run into on Stung! is that it feels like you have heard all of this before. Take, for example, ‘Neon River’. For the first minute you are pulled into a sparse Jay Watson led acoustic song, then singer Nicholas Allbrook backed by a blistering guitar riff barges in, howling in a neon river while he watches a city sink in the distance. The immediacy and urgency of the salvo calls back to an earlier single ‘Xanman’. But whereas ‘Xanman’ makes you want to enter a room by fly kicking a door off of its hinges, ‘Neon River’ doesn’t have the same effect by way of having been done before.
That is not to say that Stung! is bad - Pond have sanded and polished their template to perfection. Which left me asking another question - who will Stung! appeal to most? Each time King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard announce a new album it feels like they are trying to corner another part of the musical market. For now, Pond seem content to make the music their established fans will lap up, even if Stung! doesn't necessarily help get that group any bigger.