Pond share new single ‘Through the Heather’ ahead of album Terrestrials arriving on 19th June via their own newly coined imprint Mangovision via Secretly Distribution. Headline dates in the US run this July-September. LISTEN HERE + WATCH HERE + PRE-SAVE LP HERE.

‘Through the Heather’ was initially conceived while Pond toured Europe last year. Drummer/Keyboardist Gin kept himself entertained by conjuring musical experiments on Ableton; a few a day until something stood out. “Then him and [multi-instrumentalist + founding member] Gum worked on it more in a hotel room while watching Ice Road Truckers or something equally shit,” frontman Nicholas Allbrook explains.

Nick continues: “Sometimes rock and roll is a glamorous game baby, but mainly it isn’t. Funny that such a beautiful, melancholic, searching song was born surrounded by chip packets and track pants in a van full of filthy pigs. We had so much fun making the spring reverb thunderclaps, giving the spring a cheeky little pinch to make it go BOOM, looking out over the Indian ocean from our porch/studio in Seabird while MasterChef played silently in the corner. Let that be a lesson to all you young rockers ok? Can’t get too inspiring ya know. Gotta keep a lid on it. Chucking on the telly or making a samwich or having a nap should do it.”

WATCH: ‘Through The Heather’ (Official Visualiser)

The group of Nick Allbrook, Jay Watson, Joe Ryan, Jamie Terry, and James Ireland, exist to create – the myriad of crossovers between their projects individually and the scene they first put on the map continues today – and that pursuit is set to persist forever no doubt. Yet for the first time in Pond’s history, the recording process on their 11th was subject to a simple set of rules: No fuzz pedal. No ballads. No “Pink Floyd shit”. 

Conceived from a place of reverence for a particularly potent epoch in Oz rock, Terrestrials mines the sound of open sky melancholia, heat haze sizzling on the plains and jangly pub backrooms that hits an eternally poignant nerve for anyone familiar with the sound, time and place. From there Terrestrialsevolved and the idea of “Goths at the pub” became the record’s stylistic north star – iconic 80s Australiana being acid-washed with the eyeliner-stained post-punk of Sisters Of Mercy, Magazine and the like. “Would Goths like it?” “Could you have a beer to this?” If the answers were yes it was thrust into the mix.

Like much of the Pond catalogue, Terrestrials is a record of people and place, of exploring the identity of each, as well as where and how they intersect and interact. Extractive capitalism, power dynamics, inequality, Indigenous incarceration, eccentric outcasts, fire and water, diesel and dust, unity and division, blood and bauxite, unborn tomorrows and dead yesterdays – it’s all there. Terrestrials twitches with the desperation of people and planet on the brink, but ultimately bets on the beauty of both to prevail.

Earlier Pond shared the title track to support across triple j, Stereogum, NME, The Line Of Best Fit and more remarking on the song’s “strutting, preening glam-rock/new wave energy”. Following on from the announcement of their US dates supporting Djo – the musical project of actor, producer, and songwriter Joe Keery, known for his work in Stranger Things and Fargo – tickets for Pond’s stream of headline shows across the US this July-September are on sale now via pond.band. Locally the band will also appear locally at Against the Grain Festival in Brisbane in June, with more Australian shows to be announced. See all dates included below.