Founded back in 2008, acclaimed Perth-based JOVM mainstays POND — currently, songwriter and producer Jay Watson (vocals, guitar, keys, drums, synths and bass), who’s also the creative mastermind of acclaimed JOVM mainstay outfit GUM and a touring member of acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated JOVM mainstays Tame Impala; Nicholas Allbook (lead vocals, guitar, keys, bass, flute, slide guitar and drums; Joe Ryan (vocals, guitar, bass, 12 string guitar, slide guitar); Jamie Terry (keys, bass, synths, organs, guitar); and Jamie Ireland (drums, keys) — have released nine critically applauded albums that have seen the band’s sound gradually morph into increasingly synth-driven psych pop.

The Perth-based outfit’s last four albums have been showcases of tidiness and brevity: 10 songs/ideas tucked into 40 minutes or so. Slated for a June 21, 2024 release through Spinning Top Music, the acclaimed JOVM mainstays’ 10th album Stung! sees the band gleefully, madly and willfully lean into the largesse of the double LP, tapping into the spirit of albums like Tusk and Sign ‘O’ the Times with a 14-song effort that may arguably be the most unfettered hour of their career.

Being a band for the better part of two decades, the members of Pond have accepted — with no small joy or relief — that they are no longer beholden to shifting expectations of cool. That idea has greatly empowered them, allowing them to play precisely what they want, to not move toward any goal but being themselves.

Granted, it takes a lot more effort to the band to make a record these days: They’re all adults with relationships, children, professional obligations, hobbies, side-projects and/or some mix of them all. In fact, last year, Allbrook released a solo album and Watson released a fantastic GUM album — and both members went on fairly extensive tours to support those efforts.

The band began making Stung! in piecemeal fashion with a member or two showing up at Watson’s little backyard studio to work on a new idea. They’d thinker joyously and endlessly in Watson’s little workshop, trying out a panoply of machines and widgets to get interesting sounds. This allowed them to let the songs they were working on to sit over time, so that their deeply democratic process could not only siphon and improve the best ones, but also tease out what the album was missing.

Of course, at some time the band realized that they were running the risk of being stuck in that phase — creation, adjustment, addition — forever. So, the quintet went to Dunsborough, a scenic surfing hub on Australia’s southwestern coast, where a friend had recently finished a spacious, state-of-the-art studio. While in Dunsborough, Allbrook would run near the shore every morning. They’d all swim during the day, then record deep in the night. Most of their ancillary gear was left at home, forcing them to drill down on the songs, ideas and sounds they already had, and to make them better without getting overly carried away in endless possibility. After nearly a year of writing and workshopping, the JOVM mainstays had plenty of material for what would be the most expansive album of their career to date.

The album’s title began as an in joke for the band, a reference to having a crush on someone or something that they began to use so often that they felt they just had to call the album that. They still laugh when they hear it now, a silly inside wisecrack suddenly open to the outside world. But for the band, it’s kind of a credo too: Despite the bruises, the callousness and suffering of both every day life and the music industry, they remain stung with music, with the idea of making songs that feel just so and doing it together, as friends. And that they’re still stung with the world, too, even when it bites back.

Stung!‘s second and latest single, “(I’m) Stung” is a defiantly upbeat, big hearted and wearily resilient song anchored around strummed overdriven acoustic guitar, buzzing power chords, big shout along worthy hooks and choruses and a laid-back trippy groove serving as a supple and dreamily bed for Allbrook’s heartbroken yet proud delivery, expressing a bitterly uneasy acceptance.

“I wrote most of this while mowing someone’s lawn. I went home and put my fingers on the piano and pretty much played the base of it first go,” Pond’s Nicholas Allbrook says. “This is a very rare and special treat and buoyed me for weeks. It’s funny because I had a mad crush on someone, and they dropped me like a sack of shit and this song just flew down and clocked me right in the forehead and I felt totally better. Then Gin and Gum added all their magic – cool sounds, passing chords.

It’s about being totally pathetically stung by someone and just having to be cool with it being unrequited. Being resilient, accepting that you are a bit of a goose, but life goes on.”

Filmed by Pond and Chris Adams, edited by Jamie Terry and color graded by Tom Dunphy is shot on a Super 8 and follows the members of the band on a sand bank: Allbrook is shirtless and in silver body paint from face down to his waist. The rest of the band — Watson, Ryan, Terry and Ireland — are in silver lame outfits. A bee kite flies just above them. And throughout, Allbrook vamps like a mad Mick Jagger. Allbrook and The rest of the band walks the top of the embankment or slides down it, goofing off and in many ways attempting to not get stung — unsuccessfully.