It was the middle of Australia’s Black Summer, the nearly yearlong span that ravaged so much of the continent that untold species were entirely obliterated. In those waning days of 2019, Pond singer Nick Allbrook headed east to Melbourne for a holiday visit. Amid the blazing heat downtown, ash sprinkled from the sky, like Christmas snow in reverse. Allbrook spotted a couple cuddled together on the street, her sleeping comfortably amid these portents of doom and him slipping Ferrero Rocher truffles from thin golden wrappers. Love and simple comfort at the edge of apocalypse: It is, as Allbrook tells it now, one of the most moving things he’d ever seen.
It is now the closing scene of “Edge of the World Pt. 3,” the centerpiece of Pond’s deliciously sprawling tenth album, Stung!. What begins as a droning organ lullaby about solidarity soon becomes a formidable march, church bells and distorted bass buoying the sweet-singing Allbrook as he voices a rising tide of anxiety. A fluttering flute-and-synth duet, a brazen saxophone solo, and a span of honeyed Motown harmonies all coalesce into one of the most electrifying verses in Pond’s oeuvre, that snapshot of life on the street during the Black Summer. “It’s a light plumbing the dark,” Allbrook belts like some Pentecostal minister reaching a sermon’s climax, “at the edge of the world.” Pond tunnels through a stroboscopic synth-and-drum sequence, a mélange of chattering samples, and then a totally righteous guitar solo, reaffirming that they are one of the most versatile, inquisitive, and accomplished bands on the psychedelic rock vanguard. “Edge of the World Pt. 3,” much like Stung! itself, is a triumphant little odyssey, meant to fend off the fear.
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.
As perfectly rendered in “Edge of the World Pt. 3,” here are 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.) 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—drummer James Ireland with the backbone that led to breezy tropicália instrumental “Elf Bar Blues” or guitarist Shiny Joe Ryan with the basics of the tidal and epic finale, “Fell From Grace With the Sea.” 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 all, 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.
Stung! moves with verve and aplomb, Pond turning unexpected musical corners with audible grins wiped across their faces. “Neon River” is a delightful seesaw, shifting between gossamer spans of acoustic beauty and slicing, shout-out-loud paroxysms that suggest Led Zeppelin in trim fighting form. “So Lo” is a sizzling bit of art-house funk, New York cool and Berlin brutalism recombined in a giddy romp of existential Antipodean escapism. “Boys Don’t Crash” is a crisp guitar tune, its sharp riff and sidewinding variations spooling into a solo that seems to exalt existence itself. (That’s Watson singing with his son, whose toddler quip about riding bikes inspired the title, at the end.) There are lumbering rock songs with cowbell (“Black Lung”), acoustic aubades (“Stars in Silken Sheets”), and brilliant bursts of mutated power-pop, wonderfully warped by the flourishes of keyboardist Jamie Terry (“Last Elvis”). Stung! is, above all, a fun record, a spirited road map of Pond’s collected enthusiasms. Few bands have the skills and experience to sound this confident; they do not shy away from any of it.
But it’s a heavy thing, too: Allbrook spends so much of this hour dealing with the scars left by love, his fellow humans, and our shared history, whether admitting they’re there or trying to self-soothe with poetry, cigarettes, mythology, and, very often, humor. Scenes from the wrong side of loneliness line Stung!, like photos of refuse along the side of some scenic highway. He clings to resolve, though, to sticking around to see what else he can experience. “Sunrise for the Lonely” is an exquisite drift between feelings of eternal exile and aspiration, Allbrook searching for some anchor with his yearning falsetto. “To love is lucky,” he croons during “O, UV Ray,” a glorious tune that cuts a crooked path between The Velvet Underground and Marianne Faithfull, between Stereolab and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. “To live is brave.”
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.
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