Matt Pond strikes a wistful tone when describing the potentially crushing blow his band recently endured.
As leader of the indie chamber pop quintet Matt Pond PA, he had just played what he considers the best concert of his group’s eight-year career, a packed Feb. 7 set at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. Still high on the crowd’s energy, the band members parked their trailer – crammed with $20,000 worth of vintage guitars, drums and amps – on a side street in Brooklyn.
The next morning it was gone, the victim of a flimsy padlock and too little caution.
“I guess we’re only allowed a certain degree of happiness,” Pond said, only half joking. “But it’s just stuff, which can be replaced.”
Pond’s ability to put it in perspective may have something to do with his group’s recent successes, which range from national TV exposure to a headlining tour that takes it to Denver’s Bluebird Theater on Saturday. For a relatively young band that has released roughly an album per year since 2000, it’s a welcome string of events.
“You never see yourself doing these things until you’re doing them,” Pond said of his band’s musical stints on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” and “Last Call With Carson Daly.”
“There’s a lot pressure and you don’t want to mess up, but isn’t that the same as a concert?”
The well-deserved bursts of interest in the Brooklyn-based quintet, including write-ups in Rolling Stone and slots on the soundtrack to Fox’s popular teen drama “The O.C.,” aren’t alien to Matt Pond, who once wrote music for Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen network – but their intensity is significantly compressed.
Blame it on his band’s excellent 2005 platter, “Several Arrows Later,” a clear progression in Pond’s taut songwriting abilities. Bittersweet lyrics and melodies dissolve over mournful cello, crisp drumming and chiming acoustic notes. Imagine Peter Gabriel interpreting the clever, acerbic lyrics of Elliott Smith, and you’re close.
Matt Pond feels seasonal change and nostalgia – recurring themes in his songs – deeply and constantly. He channels those petrifying, exhilarating moments when adolescence bleeds into adulthood. Tracks like “So Much Trouble” and “It Is Safe” sound unusual enough to engage the listener but familiar enough to induce singalongs by song’s end.
“Several Arrows Later” also finds Pond at ease with his current band setup, even if he had to go through four record labels and abundant lineup changes to get there.
Now a well-oiled performance outfit, the group consists of guitarist Brian Pearl, drummer Dan Crowell, bassist Steve Jewett, cellist Dana Feder, and Pond on guitar and vocals. Pond met most of them after moving from Philadelphia (the town that inspired his band’s suffix) to Brooklyn in 2003.
“We made a point to do something closer to how we play live,” Pond said of the new album. “Everything was more focused and direct.”
Pond was so pleased with the “Arrows” recording sessions that he ended up with a glut of material, forcing him to cut another album’s worth of songs.
“We have 15, maybe 20 songs ready for the next record,” he said. “We’re going to start recording it this summer for a winter release.”
Pond is also excited about his group’s current record label, Altitude, which has signed only one other artist, the insistently named indie rocker Alaska! He noted that although the label is small, this allows it to focus fully on its artists.
“The bigger the label you’re on, the more likely you are to be forgotten,” he said. “We always want to have complete control over (the band).”
But Pond knows there are also perks to being on a major label. In order to maintain creative control, he has had to give up certain touring luxuries.
“When you’re driving in a van with six people, you’re exposed to an extreme version of their bodily functions,” he said, laughing. “You know more about them than your girlfriend.”
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-820-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
Matt Pond PA
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