In ‘Take Me Avalon I’m Young’ the musician/gardener once again takes centre stage.

If everything on Earth was wiped out today, other than the music and videos of POND, future civilisations would probably think of this planet as a magical place. Over his 12 years as frontman of the band, Nicholas Allbrook has enchanted us with his outsider-pop, pocket symphonies, and spasmodic dance moves. His spacey jams simultaneously send us into orbit and ground us, as he examines Australian folklore and culture with a poetic gaze. In case you can’t tell, I’m a big fan.

POND’s ninth studio record, 9, sees the band continue to evolve. This time, programmed loops form the departure point, with splattered melodies coming in from all angles. As Nick explains in the interview below, the album was the result of hours of jamming, as opposed to months of songwriting, with the group setting no parameters other than sticking with the loops they’d previously designed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoUro_lCzzg

Today they share a clip by Bunny Kinney for the rousing ballad ‘Take Me Avalon I’m Young’, which features Nick attempting a bunch of sports in Hastings, England. If you read that synopsis in the YouTube description just about any other artist’s video, you’d probably automatically skip it, but with POND we trust there’s something obscure and cheeky coming, and as always, they don’t disappoint.

“This was, no joke, the most fun video I’ve ever been a part of. I spent two days rushing around Hastings with my dear friend Bunny and the lovely George, Joe and James Beatty, running, swimming, shooting, fencing and playing terrible basketball. It was a dream come true. The freezing sunrise yoga was magical in retrospect, even if I was a brat at the time (sorry Bunny). A perfect seaside weekend; I got to play, and Bunny got to create an ode to his favourite sport, the modern pentathlon. Massive thanks to Lewis and Steph for their patience and kindness as my instructors,” Nick says of the clip.

It also comes with word of an East Coast tour over Feb and April (tickets and info here). Peep the dates below along with an interview we did with Nick a coupla weeks ago:

When we last spoke, you were saying you were keen to get ‘Tasmania’ out, and already had another bunch of songs that you were keen to release. Was this them? Did that change?

No, it’s not. This is the first record for ages where we started most of the songs together and just built them slowly in the studio from very humble beginnings, like a little tape loop or a jam that we had or something. You sort of try and pick out the tiny little ideas inside. There are a couple of songs that were written beforehand, but not many…

Those ones that I was talking about [in our last interview], I think I’ve still got them, actually. We just didn’t record them for this album. They might go on, they might go in the bin.

How did you bring it all together? Writing songs in a group can be chaotic for some bands…

I would have said exactly the same thing. If someone had asked me for the last 10 years… We started out making a fuck load of noise together randomly, but then we got too frustrated because it just sounded like a giant pile of shit with everyone, everyone would crack on the fuzz pedal immediately and bash the symbols and within four bars, you’re suddenly at maximum.
But I think, in our dotage, we’re starting to develop. We’ve obviously developed enough restraints to actually have a good jam.

I think the key was putting some sort of anchor, some sort of restriction on it. We had an 808 playing a nice little beat. So, we’ve got to stick to that. I don’t know, it finally worked. Just fucking around and doing jams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Bs7sYynvw

I read that you guys were just like “fuck it” with this record. And I’m wondering whether you were saying that to yourselves, your fans, your label? Who are you fucking?

That’s a good question. I don’t know. Maybe us, maybe ourselves and expectations. Maybe? Maybe whoever else consumes or analyzes it or looks at it. I think we just thought we’ve put in some serious effort to make three albums worth of pretty well-rounded psych-pop. Stone cold classics [laughs]. Let’s do what is just purely fun: making a shit load of noise.

I’m pretty sure every album [we say] it’s going to be a double album, really low-fi, or it’ll sound like The Pod by Ween or something. Just this mad thing that goes between noise jams instead of parliament funkadelic parody. But it never ends up like that. We get too carried away and start polishing it and be like, “oh, that sound doesn’t really fit,” to make it a more concise piece. I guess the thing is, we’ve already done that. With our first album. Which is just a complete cluster fuck of psilocybin insanity.

How do you think ‘Tasmania’ would react if it met ‘9’ in a bar? I imagine Nine is an oversized leather jacket, slicked-back hair, kind of guy. Maybe having a shot of Jaeger and smoking a spliff and then passing out…

I think you’ve actually nailed it. I think 9 would be wearing a duster and little glasses. He’d probably ask Tasmania which is his favourite Nine Inch Nails album. Or are you excited for the new Matrix movie? Was Blade Two better than Blade One?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFmeRPlNJgw

You had to cancel a bunch of shows last year. Were you able to glean any positives from it?

Yeah. Plenty of positives. I became a gardener, a professional, like my job, which was really amazing. It was my second favorite job I’ve ever had, apart from music. I feel like I was hitting peak levels being able to say musician/gardener and writing that on my forms and stuff.

I got to stay put for the first time in 12 years. It was the first time we didn’t go on tour. It actually made me realize how transient my life has been for the last decade. I… Yeah. This last, this last period I got to watch, I got to watch the seasons come and go, from one place, for a whole cycle. Which is amazing. I forgot about it. I forgot about that feeling of watching the nasturtiums come back.