The album ‘Stung!’ from Pond was released in June to much anticipation and critical acclaim. The band has long been praised for their willingness to experiment with different sounds and continue to be inspired. This is obvious in the album’s title itself, which started as a joke within the band, a reference to having a crush on someone or something that they began to use so often they simply had to make it the name. The band described as a kind of a credo that “despite the bruises, the callousness, and the suffering, they remain stung with music”, which is evident in the lyrics of the title track – “If love’s a game, then I guess you won.”
‘Stung!’ overall speaks to our collective modern paradox of being disappointed in or even disconsolate over a world that we know more about than any prior generation but also being in awe of it and (sometimes) each other, as well. What’s kept the band able to be so proflic in making music has been their camaraderie, “it’s been a long, strange trip,” shared guitarist “Shiny Joe” Ryan, “we’re a big team, you know big teamwork kind of band. We try to keep it friendly and it seems to be working for us.” The band’s co-writer and multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson stated, “we managed to take advice and criticism without a blink of the eye.” That easy-going attitude was also prevalent in the making of their latest album, as Watson shared, “writing and jamming and stuff is just really fun and and easy. It’s a pleasure, the making music’s the easy part of being in a band.”
In the midst of touring in support of the new album, the band released a full live concert video that captured the new material titled ‘Live at Lodge Room’ that chronicled their US tour stop earlier this year in Los Angeles. Of the release, Nick Allbrook of the band noted how they felt so good about the performance to release it, “The Lodge Room show was deep into a really great, really hot, sweaty tour of the South. We had the best time eating crawfish and playing brand new songs from Stung! in a giant pool of sweat, so by the time we got to LA we weren’t even ready to kill each other at all. We were actually really psyched, not even sick thanks to the heat I reckon. Then our dear friend (and my Astral Twin) Sam Kristofski came and filmed everything and made us look super cool – something he’s really good at. This was a high point of one of the easiest and most fun tours we’ve done for ages. I believe we actually high fived and hugged at the end like a cheesy movie.”
Pond members Jay Watson, Nick Allbrook and “Shiny Joe” Ryan spoke with B-Sides host Pete Mar about how the strong camaraderie between them have made it easy to create music an organic process. They talk about how it helped make their recently released tenth studio album, ‘Stung’, being able to experiment and continue to push boundaries and more.
