Pond Releases New Single 'So Lo' and Unveils Fall North American Tour Dates
The song is from the new album Stung!, which will be out June 21.
By: Josh Sharpe May. 28, 2024
Fresh off a run of US tour dates and a performance at Kilby Court Festival, Pond has released another taste of their highly anticipated tenth studio album Stung!, out June 21 via Spinning Top Records.
“So Lo” a sizzling bit of art-house funk, New York cool and Berlin brutalism recombined in a giddy romp. ”So Lo” is out today along with an animated facial capture visualizer, by Alejandro Crawford who also worked with Pond on the video for their quintessential track “Paint Me Silver”.
“I think Gum was just messing around on guitar playing something fun and cheesy and then realized it could be cool in a kind of cold, concrete, No-Wave way. I wrote the line about white dreads while waiting for a bus in Tottenham - maybe there were some hippies around, maybe there weren't, who can really say where hippies are or aren't at any given time... The words were “all these tablets got me breaking in two” but when I first double tracked the vocals they were a bit out of time and gum thought I said, “these tummy tablets got me breaking in two” which made us laugh, and thus, by the laws of Pond, became official. Some of the lyrics are sad honestly, about watching your future as you’d imagined it evaporate before your eyes - being haunted by “a child as brittle as paper”. Gum thought I was saying “horny badger, brittle as paper” but that was a bridge too far, even for us. This song sort of skirts between being horrendously bleak and really dumb. The vocoder Gin and Gum put on “so European” absolutely kills me.”
The band will kick off their next tour in Boston on November 12 and make stops in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, DC, Toronto, San Francisco, LA and more. Tickets are on sale Friday, May 31 at 10am local and a full rundown can be found below.
Last month, the band released the second single from the new album, “(I’m) Stung.” Consequence described the song as “warm and whimsical” and it was called out as a song of the week at Under the Radar and Paste Magazine.
The last four Pond albums have been showcases of tidiness and brevity, 10 ideas always tucked into 40 minutes or so. But on Stung!, they gleefully, madly, and willfully lean into double-LP largesse, tapping the spirit of Tusk and Sign ‘O’ the Times by funneling 14 songs into the most unfettered and splendid hour of their recording career. A band for the better part of two decades, Pond has accepted (with no small joy or relief) that they are no longer beholden to shifting expectations of cool. That idea has empowered them, allowing them to play precisely what they want, to not move toward any goal but being themselves.
On Stung! you’ll find some of Pond’s most glorious rock songs ever and also some of their least rock moments, all psychedelic drapery or funk vim. In that epic, as in Stung! at large, Allbrook speaks to our collective modern paradox of being disappointed in or even disconsolate over a world that we know more about than any prior generation but also being in awe of it and (sometimes) each other, too. There are so many reasons to cry and so many reasons to marvel. Can’t they all, Pond suggests with Stung!, be reasons to sing?
It takes more effort for Pond to make a record these days—not musically, of course, but logistically. They’re all adults with relationships, children, professions, hobbies, side-projects, or some mix of them all. (To wit, Allbrook and Jay Watson, or GUM, both released solo albums last year, with GUM just recently announcing a collaborative full-length album with Ambrose Kenny-Smith (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Murlocs that will land on July 19, 2024).) They began making Stung! in piecemeal fashion, then, a member or two showing up at the little studio in Watson’s back yard to work on a new idea. They’d tinker joyously and endlessly in Watson’s little workshop, trying a panoply of machines and widgets to get the most interesting sounds. What’s more, they were able to let the songs they had sit over time, so that Pond’s deeply democratic process could not only siphon and improve the best ones but also tease out what they might be missing for this very full double-record.
At last, they realized they ran the risk of being stuck in this phase—creation, adjustment, addition—forever. The whole quintet decamped to Dunsborough, the scenic surfing hub on Australia’s southwestern coast where a friend had recently finished a spacious and state-of-the-art studio. Allbrook would run near the shore each morning. They’d all swim during the day, then record until deep in the night. They left most of their ancillary gear at home, forcing them to drill down on the songs, ideas, and sounds they already had, to make them better without getting carried away in endless possibility. After nearly a year of writing and workshopping, they had plenty of material, the makings of a set more expansive than any previous Pond album.
The title Stung! began as a joke in Pond, a reference to having a crush on someone or something that they began to use so often they simply had to make it the name. They still laugh when they hear it now, a silly inside wisecrack suddenly open to the outside world. But it’s kind of a credo, too: despite the bruises, the callousness, and the suffering, they remain stung with music, with the idea of making songs that feel just so and doing it together, as friends. And they are stung with the world, too, even when it bites back. “Well, I’m stung/the bells been rung,” Allbrook sings during the winning title track. “If love’s a game, then I guess you won.” Ten albums in, though, Pond seems to be having more fun playing now than ever before.
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR (JUST ANNOUNCED!):
With special guest Fazerdaze
11.12.24 - Royale - Boston, MA
11.13.24 - Brooklyn Steel - Brooklyn, NY
11.14.24 - Union Transfer - Philadelphia, PA
11.16.24 - 9:30 Club - Washington, DC
11.17.24 - Mr. Smalls Theatre - Pittsburgh, PA
11.19.24 - Danforth Music Hall - Toronto, ON
11.20.24 - St. Andrew’s Hall - Detroit, MI
11.22.24 - Vic Theatre - Chicago, IL
11.23.24 - First Avenue - Minneapolis, MN
11.28.24 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC
11.29.24 - Neptune Theatre - Seattle, WA
11.30.24 - Revolution Hall - Portland, OR
12.3.24 - The Warfield - San Francisco, CA
12.5.24 - The Wiltern - Los Angeles, CA
UK/EU TOUR:
With special guest Barbagallo
9.24.24 Papillon - Southampton, UK
9.26.24 - Gorilla - Manchester, UK
9.27.24 - The Wardrobe - Leeds, UK
9.28.24 - The Grove - Newcastle, UK
9.29.24 - King Tut’s Wah Wah - Glasgow, UK
10.1.24 - XOYO Birmingham - Birmingham, UK
10.2.24 - Thekla - Bristol, UK
10.3.24 - Electric Ballroom - London, UK
10.5.24 - La Trabendo - Paris, FR
10.6.24 - La Grand Salon, Botanique - Brussels, BE
10.7.24 - Paradiso - Amsterdam, NL
10.8.24 - Bürgerhaus Stollwerck - Cologne, DE
10.10.24 - Hole44 - Berlin, DE
10.11.24 - Fabrik - Hamburg, DE
10.13.24 - Vega - Copenhagen, DK
AUS TOUR:
6.14.24 - VIVID Sydney at Carriageworks - Sydney, NSW with/ Delivery
6.15.24 - Altar - Hobart, TAS with/ 208L Containers
6.27.24 - Lion Arts Factory - Adelaide, SA with/ Coldwave
6.28.24 - Northcote Theatre - Melbourne, VIC with/ Parsnip
6.29.24 - The Princess Theatre - Brisbane, QLD with/ Full Flower Moon Band
7.6.24 - Freo.Social - Fremantle, WA with/ Gia Como
STUNG! TRACKLISTING:
1. Constant Picnic
2. (I'm) Stung
3. Neon River
4. So Lo
5. Black Lung
6. Sunrise For The Lonely
7. Elf Bar Blues
8. Edge of the World Pt. 3
9. Stars In Silken Sheets
10. Boys Don't Crash
11. O, UV Ray
12. Last Elvis
13. Elephant Gun
14. Fell From Grace With The Sea
Photo Credit: Michael Tartaglia
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