Pond preview ‘Terrestrials’ with the wistful new single ‘Through The Heather’

Pond have rolled out another piece of Terrestrials, and Through The Heather arrives with the kind of drowsy, searching atmosphere the band have been leaning into ahead of the album’s June 19 release on their own Mangovision imprint. The Australian psych rock group had already shared the title track and Two Hands, but this one comes with a more particular backstory: it was put together while the band were on their European tour last year, with drummer James ‘Gin’ Ireland experimenting on Ableton.

The song itself moves on gently twinkling guitars and a dreamily melodic synth line, an arrangement that suits the slightly bruised mood suggested by the title. The video is below.

Frontman Nicholas Allbrook framed the track with the sort of backhanded romance Pond tend to favour. “Sometimes rock and roll is a glamorous game baby, but mainly it isn’t,” he said. “Funny that such a beautiful, melancholic, searching song was born surrounded by chip packets and track pants in a van full of filthy pigs.”

He went on to describe the band’s process at their porch-slash-studio in Seabird, where they were looking out over the Indian Ocean while MasterChef played silently in the corner. “We had so much fun making the spring reverb thunderclaps, giving the spring a cheeky little pinch to make it go BOOM,” he said. “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.”

Terrestrials is Pond’s 11th studio album and arrives three years after 9 and a year after Stung!, the latter suggesting a band still committed to stretching psych-pop until it frays. The new record’s tracklist runs through Skyworks, Casuarina, Through The Heather, Two Hands, Roebuck Plains, The Fatal Shore, Tourmaline, Terrestrials, Personal Hell and Nashville (I’m Dying).

The group will also spend much of July through September on the road in the US, with some dates supporting Djo. Tickets are available here.

The tour begins in Atlanta on July 10 and continues through Pittsburgh, Forest Hills, Portland, Lewiston, Toronto and Richmond in July, before August dates in Nashville, Chicago and Minneapolis, then September shows in Seattle, Portland, Denver, Austin, Dallas and Los Angeles. The dates marked with an asterisk are in support of Djo.

Pond’s last album, Stung!, followed 2021’s 9. In a four-star review of 9, Rhys Buchanan wrote for NME: “It can be a risky game to throw yourself into so many different styles on a record, let alone within individual songs. Yet – from Bowie to Kurt Cobain and William Burroughs – artists of all kinds have found joy in such surrealist methods of cutting up their work and putting it back together.” He added: “Having perhaps taken their psych-pop to the edges of what’s possible, Pond deserve this moment. Hopefully, it proves a gateway to a new era for the band that keeps on giving.”