Just two months since they dropped the frenetic, pulsating single 'Pink Lunettes', Pond have revealed their ninth studio album, the creatively titled '9', will land 1 October.
The next chapter from this record is the Daft Punk, Phoenix-flavoured 'America's Cup' shining brightly with its funk, space-rock vibes."The beat makes me think of a New York street strut, 'Sesame Street' style," frontman Nick Allbrook says of the single.
"But it's about Fremantle before Alan Bond gave the big ball of gentrification it's final shove, when it was cheap and harsh, and the broken relics of the pre-'87 port city were young, groovy cats in a secret idyll wedged between the river and the sea.
"It's also about blokes being different versions of whatever the hell we've been taught we're supposed to be."
Pond will also headline shows next month in Sydney and Melbourne alongside their two rescheduled Perth shows with Methyl Ethel.
"We sort of gave ourselves permission to make something stuffed this time," muses Allbrook on the new album.
"We'd settled into a pretty tight routine with the last few albums and wanted to shake a boat with this, so we started off with filling a few tape reels with some absolutely heinous, improvised, sonic babble which, after much sifting, became the first few songs of the album.
"We also wanted to up the tempo. The last few albums have a neat little mantra or repetitive theme. If I was forced to find something like that in '9', I guess it would be 'biography' or 'observation' – a lot of the lyrics seem to focus on single people's lives, or the lives of small moments or small things when you zoom real close up and they reveal something deeper.
"Stuff like my cheap Chinese slippers, or a soiled teddy bear, or Agnes Martin (not to put them in the same category, although maybe Agnes would've appreciated it).
"In the Rorschach test of re-reading lyrics, one thing that sticks out is a fixation on leaving behind a time of golden optimism and uncynical abandon. We can't look at ourselves the same anymore, and the world we've built provides a scary len for viewing our past."
'9' is scheduled for release 1 October, 2021.
Tickets to Pond's Sydney and Melbourne shows go on sale from 9am EST on 28 May.
Pond 2021 Tour Dates
Thu 24 Jun - The Factory (Sydney)* early & late showsFri 25 Jun - Croxton (Melbourne)
Sat 26 Jun - Croxton (Melbourne)
Sun 27 Jun - Magnet House (Perth)* co-headline with Methyl Ethel
Mon 28 Jun - Magnet House (Perth)* co-headline with Methyl Ethel
