The Australian quintet Pond is only five years old and is already proving to be quite the prolific group. Pond released Hobo Rocket, in the US August 6 on Modular People Records. In a fit of unabashed frankness we can admit that this album might not be for everyone. It’s abrasive. It’s unrelenting. At its most apologetic times, it’s only subtly melodic. It’s not poorly produced, but it’s intentionally fuzzed. It is, to the right audience, a most impressive feat in modern psychedelic rock.
The first two and a half minutes of the album’s first track, “Whatever Happened to the Million Head Collide” are just about as confusing as the name of the album. It’s slightly unnerving and definitely jarring, which doesn’t make for an easy welcome to the record. Two and a half minutes in, however, the breakdown comes and that slightly uneasy feeling you might have had if you made it to this point becomes well worth it.
Much more overtly than Tame Impala, with whom they share three members, Pond and Hobo Rocket draws its influences directly from the psychedelic sounds of the 1960s. Where Tame Impala attempts to appease (successfully so, it seems, based on their widespread popularity) an audience with either a lower tolerance to thrashing or a higher tolerance to keen pop (whichever way you want to look at it), Pond plays no such game. In Hobo Rocket, the group does everything it can to artfully aggravate the senses and somehow manages to simultaneously do so while producing a wholly enjoyable record that’s proving a challenge to take off repeat.
I don’t mean to scare anyone off this record. Even though the band’s only five years old, these guys know their audience and they’re playing to those folks. In Hobo Rocket, however, there’s the potential to expand. If you aren’t going into it, however, a pre-existing fan of Pond or a pre-existing fan of relatively aggressive sounds it might be wise to start with the more melodic “O Dharma” and trace your steps from there; suggesting that is not something I take lightly but the potential pleasure that can be gleaned from Hobo Rocket is so rewarding that it’s worth the back roads to get yourself there.
