Pond is the sound of your favourite Perth musicians having the time of their life.
Hobo Rocket is the fifth LP from the WA five-piece, made up of Nick Allbrook, Jay Watson, Cam Avery, Joseph Ryan and Jamie Terry. It's also their most immediate, a 30-minute blast of twisted psychedelia and Sabbath savagery.
I caught up with amiable guitarist Jay Watson — who splits his time between Pond, Tame Impala and his forthcoming solo project — to talk chaos, ambition, and why he feels bad for people who buy Hobo Rocket.
Congratulations on Hobo Rocket, it’s fucking amazing.
Oh, yeah? You like it?
Yeah.
I’m kind of surprised people actually like it. It’s pretty weird.
Yeah, but that’s part of it’s charm.
Yeah! That’s good. That’s awesome.
You’ve said that this was the band’s attempt to capture the excitement you get from watching YouTube videos of yourself playing live on a record. Listening back to it, do you feel like you succeeded?
Yeah, I guess. It’s kind of rogue… I mean, we rushed it, because we never have any time. We recorded it in, like, three days. There’s a lot of stuff we could have done better or tighter. A lot of the takes are first takes. But I think that means it sounds kind of rogue and chaotic, like our live show does, just because we never rehearse properly. I mean, next time we play live, it’ll still be a party, but we will have rehearsed a lot more and we’ll have all these visuals and synths that we never bothered to bring before.
Those first tours of America were the dodgiest versions of the songs, but that gave it this freaky caveman energy, which is kind of what the album sounds like. There are a lot of dodgy bits on it, and it could have been a lot tighter, but I’m proud of us for keeping it warts-and-all.
Yeah. Earlier Pond records wore their influences on their sleeves; do you feel like the band’s moved beyond that now? That the band has more of its own identity?
I guess so. I mean, the next album’s going to be even more original, but even on this one, the two singles are the only particularly derivative tracks. Nick wrote ‘Xanman’ ages ago. I mean, it’s not that it’s derivative, but it sounds kind of glammy or Bowie-ish or whatever, but heavier. And ‘Giant Tortoise’, I had that riff for years, since I was a teenager. The start is a complete and utter rip-off of My Bloody Valentine. I can’t remember if we realised that at the time or not, but now I just tell everyone that anyway. That’s about as derivative as you can get; actually ripping something off.
We don’t often put all the stuff we’ve learnt into our records, regrettably. I don’t know why, but we kind of make our records in a particular mode or style. We could have made it a lot more original or progressive. But that’s cool. The next one is going to have some crazy sounds on it, you know, drum machines and more synthesizers. Stuff that we wouldn’t normally do, because we’re sick of retro rockin’.
The speed you guys pump these things out at is amazing. Do you have an idea how far away the next record will be? How far into it are you?
Oh, we’ve written it. We’ve been writing it for years. We were writing it before we did this one. This was supposed to be an EP, and then… I don’t know, we don’t really like EPs, so we put two more songs on it. I don’t know, I just can’t be bothered. I wouldn’t bother with an EP. So it’s really short, and it’s only seven songs, and I feel bad for people who are, like, buying it. [Laughs]
But I think it’s kind of cool. Traditionally, 34 minutes isn’t really short, at all, for an album. I’ve got heaps of albums on iTunes that are shorter. It’s kind of cool that you can just listen to it on a car ride to your friend’s place or whatever and it’s over. It’s half an hour of super intense sonic chaos.
Well, it doesn’t wear out its welcome. There’s this weird thing with records… it’s kind of like the newspaper, how there just happens to be exactly enough news to fill the newspaper every day. And records run for exactly the length of time that arbitrarily fits onto a CD. If there’s no need for it to go that long, why bother?
Yeah, yeah, totally. I would much rather hear something uncensored. It could be ten minutes or it could be three hours; it’s up to you. I never thought about that. It is a bit lame that this is art, or whatever, and people think that 48 minutes is the optimum length for it. It’s like having an optimum canvas size for your paintings!
One of the great things about the album, and all the Pond albums, I suppose, is that it just sounds like you guys are having fun. The tunes aren’t particularly introspective, you’re indulging in these over-the-top rock’n’roll excesses… Do you have more fun making Pond records and playing Pond shows than you do with any of your other projects?
In some respects, yeah. It’s funny like that. A lot of the Pond songs start off more introspective, but then we are just incapable of making them sound deep or introspective when we play them. But I think the next album is a lot more thoughtful; there are a lot of heartfelt songs on there. But it’s just impossible with us, the way we do it, to make the songs that deep, because it is just a fucking goof party, you know? We try really hard to be as serious as possible, and as life-affirming as possible, and we often fail.
I don’t know, I think I’ll have more fun with Pond once we get our shit together. We’ve never really gotten our shit together, or had time to get our shit together, especially live. I mean, when I’m playing guitar live in Pond, I guess it is pretty fun, more fun than Tame. I don’t know! It’s different things. I get a kick out of the deliberateness of Tame Impala, the perfectionism, the sense of doing things properly. But I also get a kick out of doing things roguely, which is where Pond comes in.
We all get a perverse kick out of doing things slightly more shittily. I mean, it’s not actually ‘more shittily’; it’s just for the sake of being more real. Each of these takes would have been first or second take, and someone would have whinged about it at the time. Usually Cam, because he’s playing drums and he’s not even really a drummer. He’d be like, ‘man, I didn’t do a very good job on that’, and we’d say, ‘fuck it, sorry, we’re movin’ on! Deal with it!’ So we do that, and then I spend six months being really paranoid that we fucked up and we should have recorded more takes.
I think we’re just passionate about the rogueness, because that’s what Pond is, you know? We could sit there on the computer for hours and make it sound way better, technically better. But that’s not really the point.
Has the band gotten more serious since Nick left Tame to focus on Pond? Has the band gotten its shit together a little more since then?
Well, the funny thing is, he didn’t even leave to focus more on Pond. If Pond was touring, and not Tame Impala, and he was sick of touring, he would have just stopped doing that as well, probably. He’s just doing his own thing. I mean, he’s still doing Pond, but we all do solo stuff, and that’s what he’s doing at the moment. Joe and I have solo albums coming out later this year, hopefully. So I think it just seemed like [he left Tame for Pond], and then after a few articles that’s what it looked like.
But he was just sick of touring and not recording and not being creative. And it is fucking hard. All I like to do is record, and I never really get to do it. But, you know, it is a worthy trade-off for touring the world. Touring can be like a sport, I don’t know… it’s like the painting thing. Imagine if you did a painting, and then you just went around holding up the same painting and showing it to people.
Look, whenever I say stuff like this in interviews, there’ll be some clip from it that makes me look like a wanker. Touring is awesome, I’m not complaining, but that’s what it was… he just couldn’t deal with not being able to be creative full-time. It’s also pretty tiring, after five years or whatever.
Yeah. Your solo album… what’s the status of that? Have you finished it and you’re just waiting to release it?
Yeah, that’s all finished. It’s been finished for ages. It’s just logistics… we find it easier to make albums than it is for everyone else to put them out, you know? But I’ve had it done for ages, and it’s cool, I like it. It’s a lot different. People might say it sounds just like Tame or Pond, but I don’t think it does. I think I made a concerted effort to make it a singular ‘me’ record.
In what way do you think it sounds different?
It’s just… it’s not goofy at all. It doesn’t have the Pond spirit, which is a shame, but as a side effect of that, it’s not silly at all. It’s kind of serious. I mean, it’s not serious music, but it’s, I don’t know, love songs and shit. It’s more understated. It gets pretty crazy at times, but the focus is more on songs… verse-chorus-verse-chorus. I’m making it sound really boring, but it’s cool. I think you’d like it.
Thom Yorke did an interview the other day about his other band, Atoms For Peace. He said he likes taking off the Radiohead flag and working without that level of scrutiny, but that it throws him off-balance a bit as well, because he’s going from one of the biggest bands in the world to a situation where he’s starting over. Is that kind of what it feels like for you, when you go from touring with Tame to working with Pond or working on your own stuff?
Maybe. This is probably what he meant, is that any lack of… not having all the side products of Tame Impala being so popular can only be awesome for us, other than not having much money to work with. But all the other bits — people not giving as much of a shit, people not putting so much pressure on us, playing to tiny venues, all that stuff — that’s all awesome. That’s all a bonus for us. Not having crazy fans everywhere. Not that that’s bad, but it’s fun for us to not be a massive band.
He probably gets a massive kick out of it, and that’s probably why he has so many side projects, because it’s not a massive enterprise like Radiohead. Well, not an ‘enterprise’, but an unstoppable juggernaut.
Sure. Pond are getting bigger and bigger as well, of course. Does the success of Pond feel more like it’s yours than the success of Tame? I mean, you obviously play a big role in both bands, but the media narrative around Tame is always about Kevin [Parker] and the isolated loner doing his own thing.
Well, that’s his fault for calling the record Lonerism. But yeah, I guess so. I definitely do more songwriting with Pond. I only wrote tiny parts of the Tame Impala songs. But I can’t let myself get too stoked about Pond, either, because we never know how much of it is because of Tame. If Tame Impala didn’t exist, would people care about Pond? It’s not something we really worry about, but it’s probably kind of true. I don’t really think about it.
You’ve said that you’re a jack of all trades and a master of none. Do you feel like — the more you play the guitar with Pond, the more you do your own stuff — do you feel like you’re becoming a ‘master’?
I already am, bro, I just say that because otherwise I look arrogant. [Laughs] No, because the better I get at guitar — guitar's probably my best instrument, or keyboards — the worse I get at drums. I’m fucking rubbish at drums now. I haven’t played since I stopped playing drums for Tame. It’s pretty hard to be really good at all of those things. I am going to try to learn saxophone for Pond, though, so I can do free jazz solos and play riffs on the sax like The Stooges. So that’ll be pretty cool.
Absolutely. You mentioned before how much you love recording… it’s so easy for most people to get up in the morning and do nothing. What motivates you to create stuff?
I think it’s just that we’ve got a lot of ideas. I mean, we’ve got more ideas than we have talent, that’s for sure. We’ve got more ambition than talent, as well, and that’s why we keep making lots of records. None of them are perfect or our best thing, but I feel like it’s all gearing up to a run of really amazing records one day. I don’t think any of us think that we’ve done our best yet. I mean, maybe Kevin has, but I think we have some classic songs in us. That’s motivation.
All the songs everyone’s writing are always getting better. I mean, Hobo Rocket was just a bit of fun, you know, an EP that became an album, but I think there are some good songs on it. And since we’ve done it, the songs everyone’s writing are getting more classically awesome.
Hobo Rocket is out on August 2.
