Australia’s favourite space-psych rock trippers Pond are mere weeks from the release of their sixth full-length LP Man It Feels Like Space Again, which as multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson touts is “a lot better than anything we’ve ever done”, which has only got us exploding in excitement.
With the forthcoming record set to drop on January 23 as well as the band embarking on national tour a part of (Tone Deaf reader’s favourite music day out) Laneway Festival, we had a chat with the friendliest dude in music, Jay Watson, the talented musician taking us through the whacky world of Pond, working as a solo artist, getting “in trouble” for his comments on Tame Impala’s new album as well as revealing that Pond had an entire record worth of music stolen.
Watson, akin to his band members, is a busy man. Not only is he a vocalist, guitarist and drummer for Pond, he is also the touring drummer for the psychedelic dreamers Tame Impala and in his spare time works on his solo project, GUM. We had to know where he finds the time to put out a new Pond record, “The longest we’ve ever spent together working on a Pond album is two weeks, which is this one. We tweak individually before and after and we write songs often individually.”
Bursting to chat about Man It Feels Like Space Again, the 24-year old revealed that Kevin Parker, the genius behind Tame Impala, had been involved with the record, “we mixed it with Kevin, I went to Perth for a couple of weeks, kind of just popped in every day and yelled at him to turn stuff up or to turn stuff down” he said through laughter.
We’ve already seen a different sound emit from the collective masterminds that is Pond, from the foot-stompin’ ‘Elvis Flaming Star’ to the imaginative ‘Sitting Up On Our Crane’ to their latest release, the zany ‘Zond’, it appears the quintet’s direction has shifted from 2012’s fat-riffed Hobo Rocket.
Detailing Pond’s developing sound, he divulged “there’s heavy cock-rock Pond, then there’s kind of glam songs, and then. I think this record is more triumphant and kind of euphoric than any ours before, there’s more hands in the air euphoric bits. It’s a bit more positive than the last one.”
Writing music not only for Pond, but for his solo project GUM too, Watson spoke of his promising individual project, “I’ve almost finished my solo album now and I’m just sitting around all day on my laptop finishing that.”
Continuing, he explained, “some of those songs could definitely be Pond songs, ‘Sitting Up On Our Crane’ is a kind of ballad of mine and that could be a GUM song just like Joe or Nick’s songs could be solo ones. But the lyrics are about when we used to climb cranes together, so it kind of made sense to make it a Pond one, brings a bit more heart to it.”
With one full LP under his GUM belt, Watson has released solo tracks online for free download. Probed as to whether this bothered him, especially in light of inflamed artist commentary late last year from the likes of Taylor Swift who attested that “art shouldn’t be given away for free”, he gave a brutally honest response “I don’t care at all, I’ve never really made any money from selling from records, next to nothing. I figure if I haven’t had any money from it – fuck it!”
“If I like something and it’s kind of like an obscure or a young band or a band that’s really good that probably wouldn’t be making any money from it and deserves it, I’ll buy their stuff from iTunes.”
Before letting us in on a little secret “if it’s something like the Prince Best Of I’m just going to Pirate Bay it because sorry Prince, you’ve got enough bro. Most of the music I listen to is made by really, really successful rich people like Queen or Michael Jackson or Prince, so fuck ‘em!”
Despite the excitement of Man It Feels Like Space Again hitting shelves in a under a fortnight, there is some pretty shitty news in the world of Pond that’ll make any fans’ blood boil.
In November of last year in Portland, Pond’s van was broken into, thieves stealing a large amount of equipment and gear, but worst of all, material for a special new record.
“It was our sound guys backpack and laptop which had about $20,000 worth of plug-ins back, we managed to get a lot of the plug-ins back from audio companies, but never the laptop or the bag, and his brand new pelican bag.”
Revealing the most damaging news, “We had been recording every show to do a live LP and we lost it all, which is a bummer because we had some really good ones, hopefully we can still salvage a couple.”
With new albums the main theme of conversation, it’d be almost impossible to have missed the viral article that appeared late last year claiming that “Tame Impala’s new album would be more electronic”, a comment that was loosely made by Watson himself that generated quite a bit of heat, with Kevin Parker himself posting a screenshot of the article on his Instagram and captioning “click bait L”
Laughing, Watson spoke of these comments “every time I start doing interviews again I forget that Tame Impala is a really, really big deal, I forget!” His tone a little more serious, he continued “I never want to be like ‘no comment’ acting like a big rock star or something, so I’m always like ‘oh yeah he’s workin’ away on it’ and then of course it’s on something like NME the next day with a picture of me looking terrible or something.”
Assuring that it wasn’t that big of a deal, he explained “I didn’t really get in trouble, I got in trouble from myself for looking like a fool. It was just a token quote that people always say, it’s a pretty beige quote, you know, it’s like when people say ‘oh it’s a lot darker’.” Admitting that publications weren’t to blame “they were just doing their job it was my fault for saying anything.”
With the topic of Tame Impala’s new record, Watson, having clearly learned from prior lesson, kept fairly tight-lipped, “I was involved a bit on the last record but not really this time, but I’m sure it’s going to be great, it always is.”
The band are gearing up for their first Aussie performances of the year, charging headfirst into Laneway Festival with an arsenal of new material, which if what we’ve seen so far is anything to go by, will be an epic live show and one of the better albums of 2015.
Laneway & Pond 2015 Dates
Singapore: Saturday 24 January The Meadow, Gardens By The Bay
Auckland: Monday 26 January Silo Park
Brisbane: Saturday 31 January Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills (16+)
Sydney: Sunday 1 February Sydney College Of The Arts (Sca), Rozelle *Subject To Da Approval
Tuesday 3rd February Corner Hotel, Melbourne (18+)
Thursday 5th February Oxford Art Factory, Sydney (18+)
Adelaide: Friday 6 February Harts Mill, Port Adelaide (16+)
Melbourne: Saturday 7 February Footscray Community Arts Centre (Fcac) And The River’s Edge
Fremantle: Sunday 8 February Esplanade Reserve And West End
