Hobo Rocket, their fifth album, was finally released on August 2nd. And to say that Pond is on fire would be an understatement: the guys have produced five albums in the span of five years since their formation. And with them, it’s not the common tale of I’m-aiming-for-commercial-success-so-I-force-myself-to-be-productive like so many artists have fallen trap into nowadays. It seems like their heads are just so full with ideas that they simply can’t contain it all inside anymore, and those ideas found their way out themselves.

The album opens with Whatever Happened To The Million Head Collide, giving us a warm up before we move on deeper into the album, with such futuristic notes that somehow still have a trace of vintage feel amidst the modern vibe. The drums in the background work so well with the tingling synthesizers and vocalist, Nick Allbrook’s yowls and occasional chants. Allbrook’s scream in the middle of the song should’ve felt out of place. But miraculously, it doesn’t. It actually works with the pace of the whole song. As the song breaks into a full-on guitar riffs, you can’t help but lose yourself to the rock ‘n roll feel that lulls your subconscious into a state of trance. And it’s just the beginning.

“Xanman, Xanman. She wouldn’t understand, you were crying for your man!” Allbrook cries in the second track, Xanman. Within the first twenty seconds of the song, we are treated with the buzzing guitar that reminds us a bit with the one from the other track off Hobo Rocket: Giant Tortoise. The free-wheeling cymbals and intense loopy vortex made for hallucinogenic songwriting.

O Dharma, on the other hand, is something of a half-awake state of mind. It’s trippy and swirly, peaceful and serene—the kind of music that drowns you in a wave of positivity. Followed by Alone A Flame A Flower, a druggy, psychedelic-heavy tune, the album is brought into a halt. It’s like Pond is giving us a short break from the energetic, explosive, head-banging mood the first two songs had set up.

Hobo Rocket is full of vocals drenched in reverb, thunderous drumming, and ominous riffs as well as stabbing piano. The majority of these elements are showed in Giant Tortoise, which also happened to be the first single to be released from the album. The song gives you goosebumps, as you can feel its richness through the guitar that sounds like amplifier being fed through a filter.

Come the time for us to listen to the title track, Hobo Rocket, and our interest is instantly piqued by the spoken work poetry (performed by Cowboy John). It’s chaotic and slightly schizophrenic, and in the middle of his rambling you can hear John asking the band: “What kind of drugs you boys on?” The track is a free-flowing jam and frankly, it’s not really essential, but you got to give Pond a credit for making it as listenable as everything else on the album.

The album closes with Midnight Mass, a dreamy, heavy psych-rock that’s filled with skeletal keyboards. It’s taken to climax with Allbrook’s scream one minute into the song, and the thrill is prolonged by the drum-led freak out repete and spacey effects.

All in all, Hobo Rocket is no doubt a psychedelic beast. It’s rough; explosive; but with pedal bursts, percussion, and synth warps that are stitched skillfully. Afterall, Nick Allbrook himself had labeled the album as “…jammy, and sloppy as sh*t.” And like everything Pond has ever done, it reeks of raw emotions and passion, while still managing to be so carefully-assembled. The songs feel inaccessible, unmemorable, and the distortion that’s present throughout the album makes it indecipherable. But it works for Pond. Just like the work of Vincent Van Gogh, you don’t have to really understand it to know that it’s beautiful. Hobo Rocket might not be as ace as its predecessor, Beard, Wives, Denim, and it doesn’t really take Pond to the next level. But it’s a piece of art in its own way, and ensures Pond’s consistency in creating decent music.

How did you end up with The Vickers? Are you guys high school friends? or?

Well, it happened five years ago, Fra and Fede were schoolmates, they started to play with other guys here in Florence, then I met them and I contacted Marco to play drums. We started to play some covers by Syd Barrett, Kinks, Beatles, Blur etc… In three months we were working on our original stuff!

In 2008 you’ve been chosen by David Bash for IPO. That’s awesome. How did that happen??

David is a fantastic music lover, really cool person. One day he sent a message on our MySpace messages box (at that time MySpace was at its best): “Hi guys, you sound great, amazing songs, do you wanna come to play at the Cavern Club in Liverpool?” I remember we were incredulous, we formed the band a few mounths ago and now we’re gonna play at the Cavern Club? It was an amazing experience, we all remember those days with affection, four young people at the Beatles’ home!

When I listened to your Album Fine For Now and then listened to She’s Lost I felt something different. Fine For Now is kinda brit-pop-rock or more like garage rock and She’s Lost gives more psychedelic ambiance which is cool. Do you guys also think it’s different?

We definitely agree with you. Fine For Now was an album strongly influenced by British music, we tried to do an LP full of singles, catchy tunes, short and fast tracks, jingle jungle guitars, we still think it was a great record. She’s Lost is different; it’s a space song, a psychedelic dream made of delays and echoes with surrealistic vocals. After Fine For Now we decided to take more time to produce the songs, we experimented new sounds and we approached the songs in a different way.

For Andrea, since you wrote She’s Lost. What’s the story behind that song? what inspired you when you wrote it?

She’s Lost is inspired by a person very near to me. She uses to tell me her childhood memories. Those kind of images showed me a lost and far time that unfortunately will not return causing a deep conflict between past and present. So I wrote the song trying to describe the feelings of those tales and after we produced the track like it was a dream.

Since you guys are from Italy, how’s the music scene in there?

The scene in Italy could be more and more better. There are a lot of talented bands suffering the difficult of Italian music situation. We should need people who believe in music like promoters, labels, journalists..Someone is trying but is not enough. At the moment the good and real music is not on TV, radio, there are no important summer music festivals in Italy, and this is horrible.

What do you want to show to the music listeners when they listen to your song for the first time?

We write and play music cause is our passion and we’ll do it for the rest of our life. We hope that people enjoy our songs and we hope that our music makes they feel good! This is the role of The Vickers!

You can get their ‘She’s Lost’ single on bandcamp for €2 EUR  or you can buy their limited edition 7” vinyl here. You won’t regret it. I promise.

Their first debut, ‘Shelter Song’, is an experimental song which turns into a genius work with an amazing influence of west coast pop. You’ll hear this kaleidoscopic effect on their songs which is a result of the vintage equipments that they used to the songs. As we quote from Guardian on Temples’ Shelter Song “The singer gets the vocals just right, sounding appropriately intoxicated, dazed and suffused with surreal daydreams, with his invocations to “take me away to the twilight zone”. Temples have performed with bands like Mystery Jets, Stealing Sheep, and Moon Duo in Leeds. The newbies of Heavenly Recording which is a label for TOY, really good at things that they do, their experimental work with sounds or effects doesn’t lose a sight of their songs, we are pretty much sure Temples need to get the recognitizion (they deserve).

Temples have this infectious melodies which will linger on your mind once you listen to their music,  If you are a die-hard fans of psychedelic music, you’ll have this higher expectation for the original psychedelic tunes on their music, but Temples are a fabulous new band that will give you a nonstop hallucinogenic experience.