Each and every musician hopes to improve over time. Part of it is wanting to stay relevant, of course. Part of it is knowing that anyone would be bored by playing the same brace of sounds without any growth (which might go some way to explain the trajectories of massive millennial artists like Celine Dion, who pretty much faded away into casino residencies and frightening hair).
Perth outfit Pond take this a little bit further, with an evolving lineup and songs that step across genres as easily as stepping into another room. Jay Watson and Joe Ryan kick back at Newtown’s Courthouse Hotel over beer, wedges and neighbouring construction work to think about how far they’ve come.
“I remember when we were starting off,” Watson says to an overture of bulldozer and crumbling masonry, “those hopes of notoriety or getting somewhere never really factored into what we were doing, which was good. Put it this way, we used to come to Sydney when Tame Impala started getting signed –”
“Can’t use those words,” Ryan quips, referring to Watson’s other musical venture. I promise not to mention them in the article.
“But we’d come,” Watson continues, “and always think that bands here were a bit weird. Not that they acted strange, but it was just different to how we were doing things. I think that’s because we always saw other bands [in Perth] were trying a bit harder, because the possibility of people ever even hearing you was lower. I mean, even acts that people talk about now in Perth, like The Scientists, they were kind of an underground band.”
“It was more making music to try and impress your friends,” Ryan agrees. “When we started, a lot of our music was a lot more pop, a lot more listenable. But nobody ever thought about it as a way of making money. It was about writing interesting songs that you could show to the people you already knew.”
Pond have without doubt come a long way from their pop-friendly beginnings. They now sell out shows here and overseas, and Man It Feels Like Space Again is their sixth album in seven years. They’re known for their ever-changing lineup, which does suggest a risk of losing cohesion – a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
“I think it’s more that we change with each [record] anyway,” Watson says. “We’ve been a six-piece for a while, but we get depressed if it sounds the same for more than a year. We have to change, and touring this album it will be way different again. Stripping back down to a four-piece, so there’ll be no more lineup changes. Unless we suck, then we might need to get people who can actually play.”
“They’re like really shitty concept albums,” Ryan chuckles. “Half-formed. Like your classic concept album, that someone forgot to put a concept to. That’s every Pond record.”
“Recently we’ve been going back, playing stuff from every album…”
“All but the second album,” Ryan reminds.
“Oh yeah,” Watson laughs. “But nobody needs that. We’ve even gone back to the first album and redid it. A lot of music we like, say Ween or The Beatles, their songs sound so different, you can’t really put them all under one genre. I’d like to do a country song followed by an electro song, then some kind of hair metal number, all in a row, and try to somehow make it sound not quite as terrible as I’ve just described it.”
As the wedges dwindle, the pair seem slightly weary from their travels (though they’re doing better than the rest of the band, who missed their flights here completely). Given they have only just returned from another US tour, it’s no surprise; from festival to theatre, Pond have been damn busy. “I always prefer playing a festival,” Watson considers. “One, the pressure’s off. If you suck, you might be ruining a few people’s day, but not the whole event. And two, you get to convert people who are open to hearing new stuff. There’s always a far larger portion of people than you think who’ve never heard of you before at a festival, which is awesome. If there’s one person at a festival who has no idea who you are, but by the end –”
Ryan quickly cuts him off with a heavy Geldof-accented caricature. “If you can change one small child’s mind, if we can corrupt one lil’ innocent youth…”
Watson laughs, shaking his head. “It’s pretty cheesy, it’s true. Even at the worst show, if I can walk away thinking that at least one person enjoyed it, I’m OK with that. But the venues have slowly been getting bigger. It’s amazing, but you don’t really notice the change, it’s so slow. It’s not like we were playing at some tiny pub and suddenly woke up and found ourselves at Glastonbury. Even that probably wouldn’t flip you out.”
“Are you kidding?” Ryan exclaims. “If I went to bed at home and woke up in Glastonbury I’d freak the fuck out.”
“But that zero to hero thing happens pretty rarely,” says Watson. “It’s all through touring and rehearsing and practice. It’s so gradual you don’t really notice. But so far, it’s been pretty great.”
Man It Feels Like Space Again out Friday January 23 throughEMI. Catch them alongsidePeter Bibby atOxford Art FactoryonThursday February 5, tickets online.Also appearing alongside Jungle, Flying Lotus, St. Vincent, Courtney Barnett and more at Laneway 2015, Sydney College of the Arts, Sunday February 1.
