The Aussie psychonauts could not have chosen a more befitting name for their trippy new album. Man It Feels Like Space Again follows in the footsteps of ’70s space rock extravaganzas. From its kaleidoscopic comic book cover to its glittery glam melted synth sheen, Pond is lost in the galactic chaos ca. 1972. Pond plays the house party for the winter of ’72 last human voyage to the moon, the soundtrack for burn-out hippie sci-fi cinema. Pond provides the score for an alternate vision of history where Elvis and the rest of the stars of the past did not die but survived and probably became extraterrestrials.

Pond’s most electronic album mixes the tinsel theatrics of T. Rex & David Bowie, the goofy grooves of Gong & Funkadelic, the most heroic hurtlings of Hawkwind, and then tosses them all into their interstellar blender with your brain set to liquefy.

The band saturates these sparkling soundscapes with layers upon layers upon layers of lustrous FX.

Where Hobo Rocket had a garage rock heart, Man It Feels Like Space Again is Pond’s polished (but still dazzlingly experimental) pop opus.

“Waiting Around For Grace” is Big Star power pop programmed with widescreen psychedelic production values. 

“Elvis’ Flaming Star” is millennial dance music mocked and spiked with a retro twist and a bass-busting backbeat. 

“Holding Out For You” is a delicately drugged out dystopian ballad about being stuck and pining for unrequited love. Melancholy’s never felt so blissful.

“Zond” is another wacky party anthem for mental ward inmates or acid-damaged aliens. 

“Heroic Shart” is Nick Allbrook trapped in a cough-syrup induced cartoon drain and clawing his way through a time-warped Saturday night horror show.

“Sitting Up On Our Crane” is Jay Watson’s turn at the controls and he steers the ship towards a more airy, head in the clouds mood, with wistful and wondrous results.

“Outside Is The Right Side” imagines a riotous post‑R&B, pre-disco UFO party with Sly Stone and George Clinton handing over the keys of the mothership to an overindulgent crowd of white boy fans.

Shiny Joe Ryan steals the show with the penultimate track “Medicine Hat” which is a headphone wet dream, Stones ca. Exile on Main St. diggin’ Krautrock blues. Halfway through this acoustic drift–the song suddenly ascends into an orgasmic rush! You wish the COSMIC coda would go on forever!

The title track is a truly tremendous closer, composed of tugs this way and that. Pond pour the kitchen’s sink–soaring synths, gravity defying guitars, doppler radar drums–into this gigantic galleon of an ending, the drunken space skiff on its last flight before it falls down the black hole.