Pond's 16-song major label debut may sound positively loopy - but the lyrics, on closer examination, are a lot darker and much deeper than first impressions would indicate.
Blasting out of your speakers like a warped hybrid of Weezer, Flaming Lips, Primus and Nada Surf after a weekend spent listening to (and then smashing) their big brother's old prog-rock records and taking power hits outta the bong they found stashed under his bed, the Portland, Oregon three-piece have conjured up an amazing collection of musical oddities that just happens to boast several potential hit singles among its heart-on-sleeve confessions.
With songs devoted to disaffected offspring, human shells, stars gone horribly off course, bad memories, escape, failure, waste, loneliness, self-doubt and Russian dogs sent into outer space to die; Rock Collection (Work Group/Sony) sounds a lot lighter, quirkier - and a hell of a lot more fun than it should, by all rights, sound.
Maybe it all boils down to a childhood spent in musical isolation.
Growing up in Juneau, Alaska, bassist/vocalist Chris Brady and guitarist/vocalist Charlie Campbell had to search far and wide to hear anything worth listening to. Spending his formative years in Boring, Oregon, drummer Dave Triebwasser didn't have things much better from an audio-input point of view.
"We had to really search for good music," laments Campbell of his and Brady's high school years. "All you'd ever hear was this Top 40 sort'a stuff. There was this one place where you could buy 'weird' records - I remember picking up a live Replacements cassette there called When The Shit Hits The Fan and just being totally amazed. You know, 'what the hell is this?' and, like, a light clicked on over my head."
"There was also this little public radio station up there that received the same releases most college radio stations got," recalls the author of "You're Not An Astronaut" and "My Dog Is An Astronaut, Though." "I volunteered to work there after high school - which was a real eye-opening experience for me. Man, those were great times," he adds of his musical coming of age.
"I sort of knew Chris from high school," Campbell says as he explains the beginnings of Pond, "but we didn't really hang out or anything until the band actually came together. I was working with someone else and we both wanted to leave town and play music somewhere more, uhm, receptive. I knew that Chris played bass, so I asked him to come play for us." "We did a couple of shows in Juneau," he adds, "and then said 'Let's go try this down South' (the duo relocated to the lower 48 states in 1989) and Pond was born."
Formed in the summer of 1991 when Brady and Campbell met Triebwasser (formerly of Thrillhammer) and the three young musicians bonded; Pond released one 45 on T/K in 1992 before someone at Sub Pop Records caught the group opening for Sprinkler and signed them.
A few tracks on various Sub Pop CDs, vinyl and holiday collections helped attract modest attention to the band, as did 1993s self-titled, Jonathan (Posies) Auer-produced full-length CD, 1995s The Practice Of Joy Before Death and opening slots for Six Finger Satellite, Throwing Muses, Rocket From The Crypt and Soundgarden.
Smart enough to recognize a great band when they finally came across one, Work Group/Sony negotiated a deal with Sub Pop for Pond in 1995 and then waited patiently for the three friends to polish up their Rock Collection.
"The whole major label thing is" begins Campbell as he attempts to describe his new life. "When you're not out on tour or recording, you seem to spend an awful lot of time at home doing absolutely nothing. You go from sitting around doing whatever you want, whenever you want - to being out on the road with practically every second of your day spoken for. It's definitely a very weird way to live."
"I imagine some of it'll have some influence on my next batch of songs," offers the man whose lyrics display almost an obsessive fondness for water and drowning. "And animals and astronauts!" Campbell adds with a chuckle. "You know, I'm not sure what, exactly, the connection is between all those elements. I don't really know why those particular themes kept cropping up in these songs - especially the astronauts!"
