Pond's latest album, 'Terrestrials', is a fascinating yet somewhat underwhelming entry into the band's discography. While it showcases their signature psych-rock sound, the album feels stuck in time, failing to push the genre boundaries that their peers have explored. The album's themes of environmental collapse, Australian identity, and corporate greed are compelling, but they're expressed through a confusing mix of abstraction and hyper-local specificity, hidden beneath biker rock riffs, and obscured through Nick Allbrook's wiry, wailing vocal delivery. This makes the album feel like a missed opportunity, as the band could have used this opportunity to explore new sonic territories and push the genre forward.
One thing that immediately stands out is the album's near-menacing tone, full of ominous synth pulses and creeping grooves. Despite Pond's claim that they recorded 'Terrestrials' without their signature fuzz pedals, the riffs still retain their crunchy, rough edges. The distortion on 'Through the Heather' is particularly notable, as it still sounds a lot like fuzz. The opener, 'Skyworks', features devious synth arpeggios that loop with Halloween-like anticipation, while 'The Fatal Shore', produced by Kevin Parker, carries a hefty four-on-the-floor bass that rumbles like an approaching army. However, aside from the acoustic, Counting Crows-adjacent 'Roebuck Plains', the record rarely strays far from Pond's pre-established musical palette of warbly, jammy walls of sound.
The tracklist of 'Terrestrials' reads like an Intro to Environmental Science syllabus, with songs named after minerals, plants, and individual stretches of landscape. The lyrics chronicle life on the plains and the mining of bauxite, the world's primary source of aluminum. 'Casuarina', named after the She-Oak tree, sticks it to the Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart, proudly abandoning subtlety and speaking to the lackluster job market. Its rushed tempo and clamoring riffs cut through the record's otherwise tangled web of references and theories. However, the music itself isn't always rousing enough to inspire close reading, and the lyrical concerns remain sadly relevant.
In my opinion, 'Terrestrials' is a fascinating yet underwhelming entry into Pond's discography. While it showcases their signature psych-rock sound, the album feels stuck in time, failing to push the genre boundaries that their peers have explored. The themes of environmental collapse, Australian identity, and corporate greed are compelling, but they're expressed through a confusing mix of abstraction and hyper-local specificity. This makes the album feel like a missed opportunity, as the band could have used this opportunity to explore new sonic territories and push the genre forward.
