MAN IT FEELS LIKE SPACE AGAIN

Pond, formed by a former Tame Impala member, has been half-jokingly self-described as "a joke" and just plain every rock cliche there ever was, but what I can say with conviction is that Pond is one of the greatest bands out there right now. This album, their crowning achievement so far, is a fun, beautiful, and enjoyable walking tour of every great trend in neo-psychedelia, from the '80's alt rock leaning, Bunnymen and Spacemen sounding styles, through '90's era Spiritualized, and into the modern indie psych of The Flaming Lips, Electric Wurms, MGMT, and of course Impala themselves, including their wilder, more experimental sides. This is all smashingly played in the prog idiom, wonderfully mixing and matching these varying styles and never having a dull moment. This goes from the expected easy-then-wild guitars and ethereal vocals to unexpected keyboard freakouts and short bursts of concrete. The eclecticism really makes the record so fascinating, and yet it this will always sound like Pond, much the way Floyd was always Floyd. Has immediately become a front-runner for album of the year 2015, highly, highly recommended.