“What kinda drugs you on maaan?” grizzles guest speaker Cowboy John on the title track of Pond’s fifth album, in a piss-take on what is likely the #1 question most often launched the Perth outfit’s way.
The answer? Probably, rock music.
On Hobo Rocket, Pond gets high on the supply of the genre’s entire acid-fried lexicon of caricature riffs, daft lyrics and even sillier sense of self-importance.
If (cue: obligatory reference) Tame Impala’s Lonerism was a love letter to a bygone era inked on fine psychedelic parchment, Pond’s latest is like a hilarious skit about its greatest excesses scrawled on a napkin.
The tarred mock-horror chords of ‘Aloneaflameaflowe’ lumber like a Black Sabbath parody (or a straight Wolfmother cover – zing), while the slide guitar and imitation sitar of ‘O Dharma’ is a trivial aping of 60s faux-spiritualism.
But like the keenest of satirists, beneath the parody lies genuine affection and understanding of it subject. Not least in the giddy power of an overblown guitar riff, of which highlights ‘Xanman’ and ‘Giant Tortoise’ contain many.
For better or worse, Hobo Rocket is also Pond’s most concise set yet, paring back their sprawling, fiddly jams into succinct spacey textures and gusts of tuneful distortion; like punch-lines without the long-winded set-up.
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But the record’s cohesion and brevity – coming in at a brisk trot of seven tracks in 34 minutes –means some tracks clumsily fade out just when they should be hitting their merrily chaotic stride.
Still, like howling space cadet Nick ‘Paisley Adams’ Allbrook surfing the psychelicious waves of his band’s witty yet walloping riffs with bug-eyed glee, Hobo Rocket is – as its title suggests – a very fun ride while it lasts.
