Weather

Personnel: Pond (vocals).A reference to a once mundane subject that's come to be loaded with the realities of climate change, The Weather is the seventh studio LP from Australian psych-pop outfit Pond. The album was produced by Tame Impala's Kevin Parker, bandmate and former bandmate of Pond founders Jay Watson and Nick Allbrook, respectively. The title also refers to the sociopolitical climate leading up to its release in the spring of 2017. In fact, the band's otherwise often inscrutable lyrics openly address these topics, alongside an also somewhat transformed sound. Still trippy and shambolic, The Weather carries an epic, sometimes otherworldly luster, with a synth-poppy psychedelia that takes a half step out of deep fuzz toward ELO. All of the above is on display on the theatrical single "30000 Megatons," which contemplates the nuclear threat ("pointed at her and him and you and me and everyone we know"). It does so with dramatic synths and pleas for sanity amid references to Xana