Matt Pond PA‘s The State Of Gold is of a piece with the singer/songwriter’s previous work in its tension between plaintive longing and earnest a ffirmations. Paradoxically, it’s a confident album about having doubts; it looks outward as well as inward. Pond will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Pond: This, in my humble brain, is one of the best little-known bands of all time. Even when they’re upbeat, they evoke the last seconds of daylight before night totally takes over. They exist in the blissful last breath before darkness. (I’m smiling and singing “Since K Got Over Me” while I type these percussive words out onto the keyboard.) Live, Alasdair’s press-on nails will sometimes fly off his fingers, out into the audience, falling through the spilling stage lights like spinning seeds. The bassist and drummer will lock in unassuming yet cruelly awesome grooves. And Mel. Mel will destroy you with her voice and her eyes and her violin. When I close my eyes, I can play these memories over and over. A few other known unknowns are the Glands, Knife In The Water and Mazarin—beautiful bands with lost melodies, forever ready to be brought back into the light. There might be millions of these bands. Someday, we should all become sonic treasure hunters, digging through the recent past to find the pure gold buried within the internet. (Just to be clear, pure gold has absolutely nothing to do with your dollars or likes).
Video after the jump.
