Perth’s, and indeed Australia’s, burgeoning psychedelic scene is virtually synonymous with Kevin Parker and his little project known as Tame Impala. But Pond – of whom Kevin Parker was once a member – are an equally important part of the psych revolution that’s seeing the yearning return of the synths and sounds seemingly extracted from the glorious beaches of the great southern land and which Australia did so well back in the day. Having steadily evolved from chaotic garage rockers to a cleaner and more melodic synth sound – the Perth band’s eighth album and somewhat of a sister album to previous album The Weather, sees Parker behind the mixer for the band he used to drum for. Tasmania has his fingerprints all over it, but remains at its core a Pond record in the very best way. It’s weird, ambitious and at times straight-up absurd; even as it settles for a vaguely more accessible and hook-heavy sound than previous efforts.
It’s also, curiously, a bit of a slow starter, the songs getting well and truly better as it goes on. Not to say the opening tracks are bad, the gorgeous ambient synth waves and pop hooks of ‘Daisy’ and 70s inspired wah funk of ‘Sixteen Days’ are far from bad, but from the thrilling chorus of the title track and into the crooked balladry of the middle section is where the record truly starts to excel. ‘Hand Mouth Dancer’ runs with its driving synth-line and stadium sized guitar solos into its stuttering and strange coda while ‘The Boys are Killing Me’ is bizarre and bombastic in its synth explosions. But still the best is yet to come, there in the beautiful swirling slow-burn of the Daft Punk redolent ‘Goodnight, P.C.C.’ coupled with the sweetly building 80s synth-pop of ‘Burnt Out Star’ and its gentle “I can wait awhile”s and restrained echo of the central refrain of ‘Tasmania’. It’s those lines, weighty in their delivery and repetition throughout the record, that feel central to its themes and reveal the undercurrent of dissatisfaction that rips and pulls beneath the fun of the record’s sounds.
“I might go shack up in Tasmania, before the ozone goes and paradise burns in Australia, who knows?” That tiny island beneath Australia, seemingly broken off and included in the country as an afterthought (sorry Tasmanians – it’s a truly lovely place), becomes the centre of escape for all of Pond’s anger at the baffling paradoxes of Australian society and the wider world. A “dejected meditation on planetary discord, water, machismo, shame, blame and responsibility, love, blood and empire.” With sardonic humour and pointed colloquialisms, the words battle with the micro-concerns of an everyday respectful life against the wider problems inherent in our colonial way of life. “I left my phone in Sydney, because all the pain outdid me, should I be worried ‘bout my kidney or worried ‘bout war?” Nick Allbrook sings on ‘Tasmania’, while ‘The Boys are Killing Me’ seems to take aim at the rampant and difficult to avoid masculinity that wields so much power in the boys clubs of the world, “I’m just a sailor and miner comin’ as I am…I don’t know if I can trust my country any more.”
“I didn’t get political, I just faced the facts. Is it critical we react on that?” Allbrook sings on ‘Hand Mouth Dancer’, one tiny line against the impending wave of personal failure, societal fractures, and environmental catastrophe. “Honey, kiss me, I don’t care if you’ve got a cold”, he goes on to sing in a rare moment of tenderness, all the more beautiful against the harsher colonial truths weaved through lines like, “me and the men of the frontier stack the bodies in a heap, Jimmy grabs a beer and we wash our hands in the creek.” Tasmania isn’t perfect. It can at times feel over-produced, filled to the brim like a sunset put through a Parker-induced Currents paint-splatter machine (its album art not doing much to curb that perception). But that’s easily put aside as its infectious nature takes hold of you. Best not dwell on negatives when music has so much to say on more important negatives, with such a damn fun and exciting way of saying it.
