"The Weather" - Pond (retrospective)

 

I've always been well and truly head over heels in love with Australian and New Zealand music (though both nations would probably rather NOT be lumped together as "Oz Rock"). Back as far as Crowded House (who, incidentally, are still knocking it out of the park), Icehouse and Big Pig, there's always been something too flipping cool for words about these bands and their ability to make my bum wiggle.

I was late to the "Pond" party, discovering them by accident in a roundabout way via the equally awesome Tame Impala but Pond's 2017 album "The Weather" is like the best antidote to these current times, and the album that is glued firmly into my Spotify account being played on a loop. 

Variously described as 'psychedelic rock for intelligent life forms', "The Weather" fuses frontman Nicholas Allbrook's plaintive vocals with the sort of soundscapes you wish YOU could wring out of your classic DXes, Pond are a band who can make you feel like you're standing in that street in Perth depicted on the front cover of the album, complaining bitterly in that "British" way about the heat but not wishing you were anywhere else in the world. 

(Sadly I never got to visit the west coast of Oz when I went over there but it's on the bucket list). 

Tracks veer from politically-minded stuff ("3000 Megatons") to daydreamy musings ("Sweep me off my feet") but the buggers save the very best track of the album right until the last. "The Weather" is impossible not to like, and I defy anyone to ruthlessly claim they can't stand it. It's a track that begs you to get in your car, slap it on, wind the windows down and just drive on a sunshine-soaked day, imagining that you'll end up at a glorious beach location populated only by the sound of the sea and the shifting sands, rather than a whole hoard of sunburnt brits and their brats all marking out their non-socially-distanced territory with stinky disposable barbecues and constantly shitting dogs. 

This album promises you that there is more in the world than the above, it sends you (my late Nan always used to describe music that tickled her fancy as 'sending her') - whatever it actually meant to her, I get it, and this album does indeed do that. Stick it on your playlist, in fact stick all Pond's music on your playlist and you will be pleased you did.