Release – Beloved psychedelic Aussie rockers Pond announced the new album, Stung! which will be released June 21, 2024 via Spinning Top Records.
Stung! marks the Perth band’s 10th album. With the album announcement comes new single “(I’m) Stung,” track and video. Last month, Pond released “Neon River” off the forthcoming album.
The last four Pond albums have been showcases of tidiness and brevity, 10 ideas always tucked into 40 minutes or so. But on Stung!, they gleefully, madly, and willfully lean into double-LP largesse, tapping the spirit of Tusk and Sign ‘O’ the Times by funneling 14 songs into the most unfettered and splendid hour of their recording career.
The band says now that they’ve been together for the better part of two decades, Pond has accepted (with no small joy or relief) that they are no longer beholden to shifting expectations of cool. That idea has empowered them, allowing them to play precisely what they want, to not move toward any goal but being themselves.
Pond said it takes more effort to make a record these days—not musically, but logistically. The band members are all adults with relationships, children, professions, hobbies, side-projects, or some mix of them all. Nick Allbrook and Jay Watson, AKA GUM, both released solo albums last year.
They began making Stung! in piecemeal fashion, then, a member or two showing up at the little studio in Watson’s back yard to work on a new idea. They’d tinker joyously and endlessly in Watson’s little workshop, trying a panoply of machines and widgets to get the most interesting sounds. What’s more, they were able to let the songs they had sit over time, so that Pond’s deeply democratic process could not only siphon and improve the best ones but also tease out what they might be missing for this very full double-record.
Pond will tour the U.S. go here for dates.
Check out Pond music here: