An Interview with POND

Words by Sarah Morrison

Photo by Matsu

Escapism, chaotic bliss, otherworldly enchantment; are just some of the ways to describe the effects of POND’s music. For almost a decade the quintet has blessed us with their sweet euphoric sounds - releasing nine studio albums. It’s been a whirlwind of endless psychedelic-pop energy, but with their latest album release “9,” POND break down their type-cast mould by redefining their spontaneous music.

We sat down with POND’s Nick Allbrook to delve into global pandemic realities, embracing spontaneity, re-learning the joy of the smaller things, the influence of Agnes Martin, and battling your inner-self fears.

How often do you go back to Australia to visit/work on music? Did you set out to start working on new material or was the album a product of escaping the pandemic isolation? 

I was there for the start of the COVID outbreak. We started working on the record just before that, early 2020, and I ended up staying until July this year.

We were working on it… fuck it’s so bizarre to think that there was a point just before that where we thought, “Ah now this is happening.” I supposed we sort of decided, since it seemed like we’re gonna have a lot of time on our hands, to use that time. It’s weird to think that there wasn’t even a moment where someone said “Look, you’re gonna be in this situation for 18 months more.” No one ever said that to anyone around the world. We’ve just all been going with it; it’s bizarre to think that.

You were quite lucky to be where you were in the world, Australia opened up very quickly in some sort of a sense of it. A lot of us were jealous looking over to that side of the world and seeing gigs start up; you had some some sort of normality coming back. 

Ya, we were quite very lucky. We were missing things, like the dichotomy between the support that the government would extend to things like big sporting events. It was a long way from the arts sector. We were still canceling shows right up until I left. We did a few but they would be canceled again. Considering that people were going to stadiums with 40,000 other people and we couldn’t play in front of 250, it was pretty bizarre. But totally in terms of your mental health, we were allowed to go to pubs, and hang out with mates and stuff. It sucked not being able to play gigs but we could still play music.

“9” was created out of reckless sessions and a lot of it being created on the spot in the studio. Was there anything you learned while utilizing spontaneity to construct the album? 

I relearnt the joy of playing music with other human beings in the same room. The creative levity from something working is so much less laboured and dicey than when you’re sitting on a laptop making beats or in a studio; they’re different types of satisfaction. But I rediscovered the immediate joy of doing music with friends.

Do you see the band moving forward using last minute improvisations as a leading force for writing? 

Ya I reckon - it’s fun! 

I don’t know if more - there’s probably a bunch of people out there who’ll say “Oh this album sucks, you should've made ‘Beard, Wives, Denim’ 2 or ‘The Weather’ 2,” but I guess it depends on who. I definitely got more out of it by having some fun jams and being able to do that for a year, it was sick!

The lyrics tend to focus on single people's lives, or the lives of small moments or small things that reveal something deeper. Were there any songs that came as a surprise to you? Were you shocked at all at where your mind took you?

Totally - "Gold Up / Plastic Sole," I started off by writing out a silly poem about my slippers. They’re these really cheap kung-fu slippers and that sort of lead me down a weird little path of thinking about the factory where they are built and where they’ve taken me throughout my life. I was reflecting on my age and the ground I’ve trotted and the weird little centimetre separation between me and the actual god breathing earth. It just went further than I expected and that happened with a lot of other tunes.

Do you tend to do that when you’re not writing? Looking at something and going into whole other, not even life lesson but looking at an object and thinking more of it than it’s in-the-moment form? 

No, unlike everyone else in normal life, I don’t take the time to look at things inquiringly and creatively when I’m just sort of going about. I’m just trying to get to the bus and it’s only as much as most other people, that I’ll look at the bus and think, “What does this mean for humanity and my place in humanity?”

This metaphor of me sitting on the second story above all these other people who can’t wheel the pram backward up the stairs… it’s only when I sit down and write stuff that I get the opportunity to follow the path. And it’s all bullshit anyway; it’s a stream of consciousness, it’s not discovering any hidden meaning, it’s just giving yourself space to reflect.

What was one of the biggest lessons or challenges that have stuck with you? 

I guess I did learn that I was getting overwhelmed by the same thing everyone else is getting overwhelmed with, hopelessness and existential dread. I realized that I couldn’t actively pursue writing about big stuff like the climate crisis because it was too sad and overwhelming.

You wrote a lot of the lyrics for the songs before the music with this album, did you find that you connected to the music on a different personal level than you have with past albums? 

It’s always haphazard, there’s no formula. It could come at any moment of the whole thing, really. But this one was definitely made me connect to the lyrics more because I was waking up early and just writing lyrics; leaning into the fact that, that was the biggest part of my job. Practicing, I’ve got time and actually try to do some good! And if it doesn’t fit into a song, it’s still good and worthwhile.

I used to really make sure I was getting down lyrics for songs or whatever but it became more of an exercise within itself.

Tell me a little bit about Anges Martin and your tether to her? 

Well, I’m a fan - I really like her work. I really like how being a zen practitioner rubbed off on her lack of pretentiousness. She was really fuckin’ no bullshit and I thought her art really expressed that. It’s just these beautiful expressive lines that come straight from her brain.

I really liked some of her letters she wrote to her art dealer. That’s the first line of the song in “Song for Agnes,” it’s just one of her letters in its entirety. She wrote “Beethoven is really about something / I go to sleep when it gets dark / I get up with the morning light like a chicken / Let's go to lunch” and that killed me; I thought it was the best letter I had ever read.

The album cover for our last album was inspired by this artist Ellsworth Kelly and after we were getting towards finishing this album, I found out Agnes Martin and Ellsworth Kelly actually lived together in New York.

I guess Agnes Martin represents a side of me that always creeps up. I so often think "Fuck this pursuit of recognition or making stuff for people and selling it.” I always think I’m going to move into a trailer and just write silly songs on a piano and record it on my little cassette player and just be done with it. But of course, I’m in here and I’m addicted, I’m part of the capitalist orthodoxy. She represents that ideal of that side of saying "Fuck it, nah.”

Emil Zátopek is the inspiration for “Czech Locomotive.” He had some really beautiful quotes for life, are there any that really speak to you?

Any quotes!? Let me look these up, I don’t want to miss this! Agh Emil, he is so cool! 

“An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.” 

I like “Great is the victory but friendship is always greater,” that’s nice. 

There are so many fuckin’ cool parts to his story! He was the big dog on the Czech team. He and his friend, who was also a runner on the team, were gonna be left behind when going to the Olympics because they were socialist sympathizers or something but the country was gonna let Emil go because he was so good and their only hope. And Emil refused to go without his friend. 

He and his wife had this incredible love story that expanded over the whole arch of his career and even when he was separated from her for political reasons and not allowed to run, they still had a love that burnt. I think he’s badass.

Do you find solace when exploring the ideas and lessons of life through others lives? 

In a way, I’m pretty all over the place with that. Even when I’m saying “I” or “me,” I think in my own head, it’s going between different personalities or characters inside myself. I know I go between a "real me" and a "parody me," like parodying the worst parts of myself; my maleness or Australian-ness, or even sometimes talking from the perspective of “Humans are fuckin’ stupid." I don’t actually bother to specify that, so it sounds like I’m expressing those sentiments.

I remember with the “Elvis Flaming Song,” one of the lines was “I hope they bring back Elvis / And all the stars of the past” and I had people saying “Oh ya Nic, he’s such a big Elvis fan! He just wants music to be real like it used to be.” That is 100% the opposite. I think Elvis was a fat racist goon. I have no sentimentality for the music of the past.

I’m curious to learn about this Pigeon that inspired “Pink Lunettes” and its attack on your boomerang. Bullshit or true story?

Oh man no that was bullshit! You got me! I don’t know why I said that (laughs). 

I read that you have a fear of being boring - are there characteristics that you try to work in order to feel confidence? Where do you think the fear stems from? 

Aw man, it’s so hard. I really want to just be myself but I know that sometimes when I’m in certain situations I kind of clam up. Especially when I know people find me a bit boring or I jabber on too much. I do want to try though, I’d like to be more self-confident. If people want to think whatever, let them think whatever.

It’s probably a lot of things, we could go into deep psychoanalysis of it but I feel like my grandma used to talk about “Oh this person’s so boring!” Something got in my head that I can’t be boring. I need to be clever and witty, quick and incisive; don’t be boring or you will be a bad person.

Maybe because I grew up in the country I talk really slowly and sometimes I’ve noticed (maybe it’s because I smoke pot and get high) that I start to talk slowly and in-depth and sometimes I see people losing concentration.

I’ve started to notice a trend within the arts communities, most have found themselves suffering from imposter syndrome. Have you ever had an experience with this? I can see it maybe tying into your inner-self fears.

I have experienced that many times. I’m constantly ridden with the feeling that I’ve blagged everyone. I’ve somehow managed to be a successful musician but I’m pretty shit really. I can’t really do much! I was much better, naturally talented at other things. But for some reason, I’ve found myself surrounded by these incredibly talented people who’ve just been supporting me from day one.

Someone’s going to find out one day. “This guy can’t see, and he’s been pretending to play flute for like ten years on stage!”