NPR Music is streaming Matt Pond PA’s new album The State Of Gold a week ahead of its June 30release date. The album will be released on the newly relaunched Doghouse Records, the label known for introducing such artists as The Get Up Kids, Hot Water Music and Say Anything.NPR’s Daniel Levin Becker on the album:
“Pond is an old-fashioned troubadour above all – a “sleepless dreamer,” per “Don’t Look Down.” His songs, held aloft by his genially emotional voice, are humble and introspective, even when they’re aloof. As he keens in “Spaceland,” this album’s slow-burning closer, “I have known more empty bedrooms than I’ll ever know myself.” But the band’s music has always moved with subtle self-assurance that belies the often-glum questing of Pond’s lyrics: the gloomy rockers of 2007’s
Last Light, the plainspoken groove of 2013’s The Lives Inside The Lines In Your Hand. On The State Of Gold, which Pond wrote in fits of inspiration throughout 2014, this manifests in sleek production values and assertive percussion, a synthetic undercurrent that highlights the songs’ elegant simplicity rather than undermining it.”
The State Of Gold is available for pre-order now via iTunes. Fans that pre-order the album throughiTunes will receive an instant download of the album’s lead track “More No More” which features Laura Burhenn of The Mynabirds and Matt Iwanusa of Caveman on the recording.
It’s hard to pin down all the different sides and stories that make up Matt Pond PA, but that’s part of their charm. They’re one of indie rock’s most unique and prolific bands, with nine full-length albums, ten EPs and innumerable tours as well as features on The O.C. and in a long-running Starbucks holiday commercial. And thanks to a successful Pledge campaign, they couldn’t be more excited to do it all again with their new album, The State Of Gold.
Matt Pond says, “One day in January of 2014, during our final session in the Bearsville cabin where we’ve written and recorded scores of songs over the years, the afternoon sunlight suddenly blew my mind. It shot between the trees, off the snowy ground of the pine forest, through the icicles of the overhanging eaves and down across the floor to my feet.
Pond continues, “I’d spent the previous year with a Stonehenge-sized writer’s block that followed me to all the corners of the country – along the winding aimlessness of tours and the failed attempts to stake claims in St. Augustine, Florida and Oakland, California. Day and night, I maintained shaky staring contests with a blank notebook while sarcastic palm fronds floated outside. Then January came and I woke up in the woods. The outline of a window frame, burning with bright yellow light, slowly edged across the cabin floor. I was in love and I was where I wanted be. I wrote “More No More” as if I were plagiarizing off the flecked and worn wood floor. The rest of the songs started flooding in throughout the spring. “Take Me With You”, “Emptiness” and “Four Eyes” were answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask. Through the summer and fall, the deluge continued until its ultimate end and answer, The State of Gold.”
