On the global political stage, storm clouds are gathering. In the face of Trump, Brexit, Isis etc, what can a poor boy do…but sing in a rock ‘n’ roll band? Amid these trouser-soiling conditions, Antipodean psychedelic rockers Pond aren’t so dumb as to try and offer cloudbusting solutions, or even a long-range forecast.

Instead, they serve up ‘The Weather’ – their own baffled, if ever madcap barometric reading of the geo-political situation (amongst others), in mind-bendingly excellent album form – all this, from their vantage point in Perth, the remote city in Western Australia which one song aptly characterizes as the ‘Edge Of The World’.

“A lot of the songs are fairly West Australian self-reflective,” explains the band’s singer-guitarist, Nick Allbrook.

Pond, who came into being amid mid-twenty something Perth scene which also spawned Tame Impala, have perhaps thus far been perceived to inhabit a Fabulous Furry Freak World of daily hallucinogen ingestion and all-eclipsing stoner apathy. Not so.

Ironically, in that context, ‘The Weather’ also packs some of the outright poppiest Pond tunes to date. The Track 2-3-4 whammy of ‘Sweep Me Off My Feet’, ‘Paint Me Silver’ and ‘Colder Than Ice’ finds the band at their most melodically direct and synth-pop-loving, if forever with a wryly subversive twist. If these be the hits to make Pond a rightful household name, then arrive they must with a dark undertow of drug chaos and genital indiscretions...