Pond frontman Nick Allbrook on life with Tiger Lily Hutchence-Geldof and new album 9

Nick Allbrook was enjoying a “very, very relaxed sunny day in Fremantle — a very domestic day” with his partner Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence-Geldof last year when he heard a noise on the street. The 33-year-old frontman of Perth psych-rockers Pond and former bass player for Tame Impala went to find out what was going on. “This woman was trying to steal a car outside our house,” Allbrook explains. “It wasn’t my car. “She came up and asked me for some water, if she could use the toilet and if I would help her steal this car.” The musician laughs that he acquiesced to two of her three requests. “We had a really long conversation,” he adds. “It was pandemic time. I didn’t really have much to do, so we just chatted for a while and it was really inspiring and interesting and emotional. “There was this visceral energy coming from her. She was a livewire. “I got the feeling that both of us, from vastly different socioeconomic demographics, were essentially needing the same thing.” Connection. Or Human Touch, as Allbrook puts it in one of nine songs on 9, the ninth album since 2009 for the prolific Ponderers. (Asked whether nine is his lucky number, the rocker chuckles and says no.) While the songwriter was happy to shoot the breeze, if not hot-wire a car, with a complete stranger, Allbrook is less friendly towards the paparazzi that have been sniffing about since Hutchence-Geldof — the only daughter of late INXS icon Michael Hutchence and British TV presenter Paula Yates, who was raised by Irish musician Bob Geldof — shifted to WA two years ago. After a few well-chosen expletives, Allbrook settles on an adjective for the photographers he’s found lurking in the bushes hoping to snap a picture of his gal. “It’s creepy. It’s really creepy. And they know it’s creepy,” he says. “They’re not embarrassed when you say ‘oh, they’re scumbags’. They’re, like, proud. “I think that’s where I’ve always gone wrong. You think that they’re going to be shamed by being called out for preying on people and distorting their lives for material gain, but I imagine they see themselves like spies or cut-throat ninjas just hustling their way to the top.” The affable if rakish rocker explains the background to Human Touch, and the rest of 9, over a Zoom call from the cluttered bedroom of a friend’s place in the London borough of Hackney. Allbrook and Hutchence-Geldof, 25, returned to the UK in July, after negotiating the red-tape of government approvals and two very unusual flights. “Singapore Airport was very, very surreal,” he begins. “It was all closed and empty. “All the shops were closed...and they lined up everyone from the plane like ducklings and led us to this one little pen with a couple of vending machines. “They were very strict with the duckling thing. If the line got too wobbly... they’d be like ‘hey, keep the line straight’.” The shift to London is likely to put the brakes on Pond’s productivity. Founded in 2008, the group has featured members of Freo’s psych-rock royalty, most notably Tame Impala’s Jay “Gumby” Watson and Kevin Parker, who continued to produce Pond’s records after leaving in 2011. Pond’s past four albums have cracked the ARIA Top 50 but, more importantly, garnered rave reviews and given the band fuel for its scintillating live performances. For some music connoisseurs, Pond is the Curb Your Enthusiasm to Tame Impala’s Seinfeld. Allbrook shrugs that they’ll probably rehearse over FaceTime and, anyway, now that Tame Impala are touring North America, Pond will be missing Watson and Shiny Joe Ryan, who is part of the chart-topping band’s road crew. “It’s so good,” Allbrook says of seeing Tame Impala finally unveil their massive new live show for fourth album The Slow Rush in the US. “I’m glad they’ve got to do it. It’s really great, pretty spectacular.” Allbrook reveals that he has finished his fourth solo record and has also recorded a “new-age, ambient” album with Tame Impala stalwart Dominic “Bambi” Simper under the moniker Allbrook/Bambi. Keeping up with the side projects out of the Tame Impala and Pond camps requires several flow charts. And Allbrook recently brought Hutchence-Geldolf in to the musical family tree, playing piano and flute on her latest release as Heavenly. Shan’s Drum is a five-minute instrumental dirge that also features San Cisco drummer Scarlett Stevens and local singer-songwriter Rachel “Racoo” Hocking. The low-key local supergroup played gigs in Perth bars before Allbrook and Hutchence-Geldof relocated to the UK. As he settles into life in London, the musician finds himself answering questions about his home town. Specifically, who was Alan Bond? And why did the America’s Cup come to Fremantle? That’s thanks to the tight, funky highlight of 9 called, you guessed it, America’s Cup — a song inspired, in part, by the gentrification of Freo when Australia defended the Auld Mug in early 1987. While Allbrook was born in November that year, he wondered what the long-time denizens thought when yachties and the top end of town invaded the Port City. “It was just a little thing I wrote after meeting a guy, a pretty down-and-out bloke around Fremantle who had ... been a local personality on the streets, and reflecting on the ways it must have changed,” he explains of the character that just happened to share the same first name as Bondy. “(Fremantle) was harsh but it was also full of optimism and carefree, happy-go-lucky vibes. Whereas now there’s all these trappings of comfort and stability and wealth, except life is shot through with this existential anxiety.” Raised in Fremantle and Derby, Allbrook’s songwriting has increasingly been tinged with doomsday vibes, using WA’s colonial history as a prism through which to view the end of the world. Pond’s previous albums, The Weather and Tasmania, both sought respite in a slowly boiling planet. On 9, however, those existential worries are viewed from Cable Beach, champagne in hand with a lover on surprisingly plaintive album finale, Toast. “It is a bit of a love song,” Allbrook laughs, “and thank you for saying that because it’s not in the press release but it’s pretty obvious, I thought.” 9 is out now.