Pond – Neon River Review

Get excited for the return of Pond. Return is probably too grand a word for three years of planning behind the scenes for another venture. Consistency is key and Pond has it in buckets. They are on the rise and rise, their wonderful effectiveness is stripped to the barebones and under construction. Neon River is a neat tease of the confident guitar work the band now wishes to highlight. Its leading role here is fitted by a swaying vocal which pops in and out of prevalence. In all, it strikes neatly and with a flick of the wrist, it dispels any need for subtlety. Why be calm when the psychedelic appeal which marked their high point, Man It Feels Like Space Again, had all the flutters of the past in mind. 

While its imagery may be more focused on laser beams than comic books, the tongue-in-cheek perplexity and depth are still very much key. Neon River depends thoroughly on the long and winding guitar work found in its mid-section. It keeps itself responsible and honest with movements like this. There is an elegance to this latest Pond effort which the band seems keen to reconnect with. In their punchy days of psychedelic joy, there was this distant appeal of patching it all together, though Neon River sounds sleek and crisp it still has the fundamental joy of a band pairing the pieces together without much of a safety net. Such is the Pond appeal, where the band find themselves up against it as ever and dispense some grand instrumentals, as expected.  

The more you listen, the neater those guitar works become. It is not that Pond has lost its almost improvised energy, they just know how to refine it and reduce it to the essentials. On top of this is a neat repetition of the title though the lyrics to this are, in the nicest way, of little interest. The focus is the instrumentals – as it is for bands like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. No trouble there, it is always a treat to hear where Pond can take us and their electrified shots of life on Neon River are keen to explode into a 1970s pastiche. It is not the lyrical constants which will be remembered, though the floaty feel, the praying on those distant towers for the red skies of a golden hour, are lush.  

Those lyrical wonders get looser and flow no better than the liver-holding river at the core of this Pond release but there is fine work in the middle of it all. Catchy, swinging instrumental work which makes up the core of Neon River gives Pond the edge they need to kickstart their next work. Consistency has benefitted this band before and, by the sounds of it, is once more the grand provider. Lucky we are to hear the licks and riffs of this new Pond single – it patches up a bit of a lacking midsection which has a bit of trouble mounting some form of lyrical clarity or message. Nothing wrong with that when it fades into the background though. The real focus is the instrumental, as it has so often been for this exciting outfit.