Australian band Tame Impala’s unexpected success has not only turned a younger generational of indie and jamband fans onto a new brand of psychedelic music deeply rooted in the late ‘60s, but it has also brought international attention to Perth’s underground music scene. Of all the bands tied to Tame Impala, perhaps none are poised for as much success as Pond. Part psych rock art collective, part Stones-inspired rock and roll band, Pond is led by longtime collaborators Nick Allbrook (vocals, flute, keyboards) and Jay Watson (guitar, keys, bass and backing vocals). Both musicians also put in time with Tame Impala: Watson has played drums, guitar and other instruments with the band since 2007 and Allbrook played guitar, keys and most recently bass with the band from 2009 until he left the group earlier this year (Tame Impala leader Kevin Parker records most of the band’s studio efforts by himself with the help of Watson and draws from a pool of musical friends for his live band; he also has played drums with Pond.) After releasing a string of underground recordings, Pond made a huge splash in the US last year with their psych-glam breakthrough Beard, Wives, Denim last year. Earlier this month they released Beard, Wives, Denim’s darker, more twisted follow-up record Hobo Rocket and the band already has their sites on their next recordings. While at home between dates with Tame Impala, recording sessions for Pond’s next LP and work on his solo project, Watson caught Relix and Jambands.com up on his current “genre experiments.”
Let’s begin by talking about when you started working on the new Pond record Hobo Rocket. Between touring with Tame Impala and dates with Pond, you’ve had a busy year. When did you jump into working on Hobo Rocket ?
We started recording about a year ago. We did it in about three sessions since we didn’t have any time because of touring with Tame Impala and stuff. Originally there was supposed to be an EP. We’ve been working on this other record for ages, and we’re finish it in September but we wanted to put something out, so we did this EP — which became the album Hobo Rocket.
We wanted to do something that was kind of heavier and more evil — less kind of cutesy. For some reason we were paranoid that the last album was like that. And then we realized how long our EP was so we just put two more songs on it and made a very short album. It’s 34 minutes, which is short by today’s standards, but I think it’s kind of cool. You probably don’t get your money to the dollar if you buy the CD or whatever, but I don’t really care.
You mentioned you wanted Hobo Rocket to be a heavy album and I think you accomplished that goal. Have you been listing to heavier music in the past year or was it simply a reaction to critics and your fans’ responses to Beard, Wives, Denim and Tame Impala’s international success?
Well, I mean we actually listened to less and less heavy music. I think it was just because we were going for a particular sound. I remember when we were listening to the Butthole Surfers and kind of heavy music that’s kind of freaky and heavy. I mean, the two singles are the most kind of straight-up rock songs on the album. But the other heavy ones are these weird, more freaked out heavy sound rather than a marching, heavy sound. The singles are the most kind of marching, heavy ones.
We’re all just obsessed with songwriting now, and there’s only a couple of really traditional songwriting songs on here. I think the next one will be more of a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, classic sort of thing, but I think we just wanted to do it as an experiment. And we’re not one of those bands where we try to make an attitude of our musical state, which might not be the best thing to do. We might never have an album where everybody thinks all the songs are really like a classic album or whatever. But that’s not really the aim. The aim is to have all these albums with different kind of feelings to them—like Beck or someone like that. Each album is almost sort of a genre experiment.
In terms of the songwriting for this album, did each of you bring different ideas to the table within this heavier, more experimental genre or did you hash these tunes out as a band?
There’s three of us [who are songwriters], and it is usually split three ways. [Singer/guitarist] Nick Allbrook wrote more of this album, I don’t even know why or how, but we just chose his songs because they suited that kind of heavier thing. But yeah the next one is more of my and [bassist] Joe Ryan’s songs. It’s still completely collaborative as every other [album] in the production and playing the instruments and everything. I think he just wrote more of the songs earlier. I wrote a song and Joe wrote a song, and Joe and I wrote a song together. So that’s like three out of seven anyway.
How far along are you into your next album?
It is all written, and we will record it in September. It’ll come out next year because we can’t tour these records this year, so the aim is to tour them both next year, which will be a blast—playing new songs from our two albums or the singles that’ll be out in a year from the two albums. I think it’ll be pretty fun, like, people coming to the shows in six months will get to hear songs off of two records—plus all the other records we have—so it will be a party. I don’t know if it’s gonna be a double album, it’ll definitely be long. Probably not too long, probably a bit longer or shorter than Bear, Wives, Denim. But definitely not half an hour like this one.
We don’t have time to tour right now. We’ve spent our whole lives flying between the States and Europe and Australia. That’s not that big of a deal. I mean, it is expensive, but as time goes on we are finding it harder and harder to tour [given all the bands we are in and family commitments.] If you want to have a relationship you can’t just tour with your band constantly, or else they’ll leave you. There was a story I was reading about Jack White—I was a massive White Stripes fan when I was younger—I was like “Man, how did your wife not go like, ‘Fuck you Jack. Stop starting bands you prick.’” Yeah I don’t know, I worshipped the White Stripes.
Have you had a chance to meet the White Stripes?
No. I don’t think I’d like to meet [Jack White] now. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be a nice guy. I don’t know, I mean I haven’t really gotten into his records post Get Behind Me Satan — The fifth one? The first five. But every time I meet someone in bands that I like, if I liked their earlier records or whatever, it kind of de-mystifies the whole thing to me. So I kind of try not to now. I don’t know. We met the Queens of the Stones Age with Tame Impala and they were really fucking cool. It’s just weird knowing that they’re just normal, completely. I mean, I’m sure they’re crazy but they’re just fucking dudes in bands that drink beers and play guitars. You know what I mean. I like to have this vision of them as mystical cartoon kind of guys. It’s fun, its just fun you know. I wouldn’t like to meet Prince either. I mean, I’m sure Prince wouldn’t be quite like Prince either. I’m sure he wouldn’t tell me a story about the shit he did earlier and demystify it for me.
Speaking of double albums, it is almost like you are releasing a double album but with a several month leg between the release of each disc.
Yeah! Bears, Wives, Denim was a bit long, and so I don’t know. I like this album at length. I mean, I don’t have a fucking attention span at all anymore with albums, unless it’s like [My Bloody Valentine’s] Loveless or fucking [The Rolling Stones’] Exile on Main St., a complete classic all the way through. I just get bored, and this isn’t Loveless or Exile on Main St. I think it’s cool—you can play it if your in a car ride with your friends to like a party or whatever. It’s a bit of a bro-album, I think the next album is more of a feminine album. This one I can imagine you with your bro’s. like Lords of Dogtown. Going to a fucking bong party or something and putting this on. Not that that’s what we were doing, but I can imagine you doing that
Speaking of heroes, what was your gateway into psychedelic music Pond has helped spearhead? Was it some of the great ’60s bands or some of the more modern interpreters of the music.
Although this album might be our most overtly electro or psych rock album ever—even though we didn’t mean it to be, it probably is. I think we’re getting less into that. I grew up with Hendrix as kind of my idol, he kind of still is. Mostly songwriting-wise. But I had this epiphany the other day that I feel like took me a lot of years to have—a fairly obvious epiphany. I feel like people in retro sort of bands around the world have probably had one though, which is like, all the people you look back on from the ’60s and since, were like the most forward thinking people of their day. Like if Syd Barrett or John Lennon from the ’60s was around now, they wouldn’t have fucking ’60s haircuts or some shit trying to be all ’60s. They’d probably be like Skrillex or someone, you know? Skrillex drops into fucking space jazz or something, I don’t know. I mean, they weren’t the most avant-garde people those two dudes, but within that kind of pop-idiom. They were as far-out as they could possibly be, using the most far-out things as they could possibly use. So we’re gonna use computers on stage, and you’re gonna see some crazy shit. We’re going to start trying to make it actually modern and futuristic—cause you kind of have to force yourself. The reason I love old records so much is almost more to do with the spirit of the sound of the music. I find even good modern records released, the way they sound, the way they’re recorded, even records I really love, I just can’t stand the production. I just want to hear people fuck up, and people laugh, and people yell in the background. And people with out-of-tune guitars, I just don’t know how people can enjoy [glossy modern music]. But that’s just me, I’m a fucking retro-phile I guess. And the thing is, we’re also ashamed of it, and we can’t help it. I think each record from now on is going to be progressively more modern and futuristic. Hopefully, that will retain the raw spirit of Pond.
Nick recently left Tame Impala to focus on other projects, though you are still a member of the band. Can we expect an increase in new Pond material given his newfound free time?
Well, he didn’t really quit to focus on Pond. Pond is his most popular band after Tame Impala. It’s really weird, I can see how people would think that. I think more of his own solo stuff is involved. I think he’ll be looking at that more than Pond. It will help because while we’re on tour he can work on the visuals and all the fun stuff here—the artwork and stuff, which he’s really good at. That’s the thing. It seems like he’s left to focus on Pond, but he didn’t really. I think he’s just had enough with touring. It’s really awesome and fun, but it’s really fucked at times, you know, when you’re creative, because touring it’s the opposite of being creative.
In terms of Pond’s live shows how much emphasis do you guys put on jamming and making each song sound different every time you play it live versus recreating these studio songs which like you said are kind of created in the studios to be these great songs?
Well, we’re gonna put more into recreating them live. We’re gonna do more jamming and improvising. When we toured the last album, we barely rehearsed you know. We were just trying to get through the songs. They were like punk versions of the songs on the albums. They were embellishments. We couldn’t—we did terrible harmonies. We did them very fast, and we got like punk. But I think lots of people loved it. I’m surprised, watching bits of the video back, I’m like “man we’re pretty shitty,” but it looked fun you know? Like crowd surfing. Whereas this time, it’ll still be fun, but we’re gonna do our darndest to sing well. We don’t have synthesizers on stage even though we had a lot of keyboards on the records. We’re gonna have percussion, we’re gonna have an extra dude with a Keyboard and percussion and harmony so we can jump around maybe. Now there’s going to be a lot more improvising. It’ll be a lot harder kind of sound whereas before it was more of a caveman version of Pond.
That’s a great way to describe it.
Yeah, it’s just like the primitive bonehead version but that’s kind of Pond.
In terms of you and Nick’s relationship, when did you guys meet and start playing music together?
It’s all very complicated. I don’t know, we met through playing in bands I guess. I’m the youngest, by about three or four years, and I was playing in a band till I was like 17 or something. And [I] started playing with [Tame Impala founder] Kevin Parker in a band which would become Tame Impala and I played drums. And then I met the other dudes and so then we started Pond, and I played guitar and keyboards and stuff. And they had a band called Mink Mussel Creek, who are like the granddaddies of our thing. They’re this fucking amazing band, we idolize them. And then I don’t know—there’s not a lot of people into this certain stuff, and you eventually meet them. And because we had a particularly unique, exact type of thing that we liked, it wasn’t hard to do it with each other, you know? I’ll be first to admit that Pond is a derivative and or whatever. But I’m also pretty adamant that it’s kind of idiosyncratic. It doesn’t sound like anything else. It’s definitely got this Pond sound, which I’m very proud of. I’d rather it be shit than hear half the kind of like do what you do, and be good without style. Not that we’re shit, but I value that.
I think that’s why people love punk rock so much—Because of the purity of it. The idea that it is primitive but still has that energy and freedom of being that way.
Yeah, I just love to hear music that has really great song-writing or whatever and great playing and great parts but [isn’t] necessarily perfectly executed. Like I love the Stones. I go in and out of loving the Stones. But they are the fucking smocksiest band. Even on their records. And I just love it. I love that Keith Richards wrote these amazing songs with these amazing guitar parts. If the Stones songs were recorded by any other band it would have been the worst shit ever yeah? That’s the part of it. Even a genius song like “Gimme Shelter” wouldn’t be what it is if the Stones hadn’t played it.
Besides writing for the new album what else do you have going on this fall that we could expect?
Nothing man, I’m trying to get my solo album out. Just working and writing the rest of this album kind of everyday and buying as much crazy gear off of eBay as I can to make it— yeah as crazy as possible, as futuristic as possible. Just getting lots of stuff for when we record. I mean we’re spending a month on this next one as opposed to three days so it’s going to sound a lot different. It may not necessarily be better, it may be more boring. That’s why, even though we rushed this one I’m really proud of it, because the chaos is fun you know? To me anyway. I’m sure other people would listen to it and be like, “man this is messy.”
Is your solo album going to have a similar vibe do you feel like? That kind of punk rock feel to it.
It’s less kind of goofy, it’s more kind of jangly or something. Jangly songs, pop songs, yeah. Really simple kind of songs. But yeah, it’s just like all love songs and stuff. It’s different than Pond and Tame Impala I think. But yeah, it is different, and I’m gonna bring it out on the next tour. But yeah, that’s my summer.
