Happy Monday!
The Onion A.V. Club is premiering the stream of Winter Lives today!
There are ways to buy the album and ways of seeing us perform live below. Please feel free to participate in any style you wish. Even if that just means gliding down a complimentary sonic stream.
The new album is available for pre-order here. We are feverishly shipping packages today and tomorrow. Order now for maximum freshness and supreme promptness!
Dates, venues and ticket links to our December shows are here. We vaguely promise all the splits, pick slides and pyrotechnics your hearts can handle!
If you like slightly strange sites full of songs, insights and baloney for an affordable fee, please go here.
Let’s rock! (I mean, right?)
m. & c.
Happy Tuesday!
Last night, our song Whoa premiered on Elle.com’s Best Songs of November! It’s a heartfelt hot potato from our upcoming album, Winter Lives.
For any of you carefree professors out there, the full title of the song is Whoa (Thirteen and Sledding With Kerry in Northern New Hampshire). One of my favorite memories from my wild, wild youth.
The album’s release is less than two weeks away, and it’s still available for pre-order here.
And we’ll be playing Whoa, along with countless blasts from the past, on the road in December. Dates, venues and ticket links are here.
People. Putting out this album is a non-sarcastic thrill for me and Chris. We fully appreciate your minds, ears and everything else that makes all of this come true. Thank you! m. & c.
P.S. On Thursday we’ll be giving away an unrelated hot potato. If you’re interested, check the website or Facebook later this week for a download link. Yes!
Happy pre-Halloween-eve!
We posted a rendition of Halloween from my harmless cavern of horrors over on Facebook. Please don’t be frightened (of Chris).
If any of you ghouls and goblins are looking for further thrills, we’ve put Skeletons and Friends up on Bandcamp and we’ve worked out a mellow Zombies cover over on Patreon.
And here are a few more innocuous alarms.
There are two weeks left to preorder the album! And there’s just a little over a month before we play shows!
Have an excellent weekend. (I will most probably be hibernating in my den of dreams, eating popcorn and hiding from clowns.)
Yes! m. and c.
Hello!
I love it when a plan — and a band — comes together!
We are wicked pleased to announce Leslie Sisson and her band, Moving Panoramas, will be joining us for these upcoming shows (exclamation point!).
Leslie was a brilliant part of the PA experience for years. Side by side, we battled many a skyline as axe-wielding bandmates, slaying sleepy weeknights with our steadfast friendship and love of hotel vending machines.
Even better, Leslie contributed heavily to the approaching Winter Lives album and will be a part of the ensemble for these December shows.
Winter Lives is pre-orderable here.
Our show dates are here.
Here’s a little video of The Glow, our first Winter Lives single, from my modest living room. Another song we’ll be playing out on the east coast in less than two months.
Thanks for your support. Yes! m.
Hello!
In honor of our of our December shows, we’d like to share a fresh performance of a song from our upcoming set list. (Whilst this living room performance is just me and Chris, our full band including Shawn Alpay, Sammi Niss and Tre Hester will be along with us for the live shows.)
We are hereby inviting you all to make musical suggestions on our Facebook page — we’ll definitely perform the songs with the most noted votes. We would love to see you somewhere on the east coast, and we’d love to play the jams you prefer.
More! The Glow is now up on Spotify!
(To coincide with the aforementioned streaming release, we’ve put together a few playlists. Links are below!)
Our Winter Lives pre-order is on the stove and cooking. These offers won’t stay up forever, so please act now to be fully prepared for the oncoming season.
Lastly, we returned home from our mini-Icelandic epic last week, shooting footage for an upcoming video. If you’d like to read more about that, travel here.
This is a continuing attempt to use the internet for good, communication and connection. A bewildered, slow dance with the heart and soul of humanity. Yes.
Thank you for both reading and listening! M.
Sleepwalking Cheetah.
For the Love of Frigg.
Stand By Your Life.
Cinematic Peaches.
Solo Shakes.
Hot Evenings With Hans.
Sidewalk Shufflers Unite.
A Large Pebble.
Past Lives.
Cutting Dirt.
Night Grooves.
Hello! Thank you for reading these words. And hopefully the words that follow.
Through Noisetrade, we’re giving away an album’s worth of prior sketches and depictions of songs yet to be finished. We’d also like to let you know about some sweet shows we’re playing on the east coast in December.
Dec 07 — Club Cafe — Pittsburgh, PA — Tickets
Dec 08 — Great Scott — Allston, MA — Tickets
Dec 09 — Underground Arts — Philadelphia, PA — Tickets
Dec 10 — Knitting Factory — Brooklyn, NY — Tickets
Dec 11 — DC9 — Washington, DC — Tickets
You see, we’re about to put out a new album. And since every part of this enterprise is an exercise in honest-to-goodness independence, we are genuinely grateful for your support. We truly couldn’t do this without you.
I hope you’re well. Yes! m.
(Chris tends to be more stone-faced than I. But he seriously hopes you’re well, as well!)
Howdy and Hello!
On August’s sweltering doorstep, we want to give you a glimpse of the cover to our upcoming winter collection. (Thank you, Jenna Casey. For both the arts and the crafts!) If we can get it done in time, we’ll be releasing it in the late fall.
If we cannot get it done in time, Chris and I will be wrestling. For our lives.
We’d also like to give away a free song today (and for one week only). It’s called Someone’s Daughter, and it’s from the soundtrack to Lebanon, PA, a little movie Chris and I scored in 2010. We hope it hits the right notes to float your summertime boats. (I might have just hit the keyboard with my forehead.) Download the track here.
That, along with the rest of the score, will be available for our supporters to download through Patreon.
(If you’re interested in this baloney, there are also exclusive videos, unheard demos, full albums, insights, pictures, participation and ideas that aren’t anywhere else. I promise that it’s a blast, blast, blast. Or something like that. Yes.)
We are excited in all the humblest ways to be moving ahead.
Because honestly, we just came here to rock with you.
Thank you! m.
Good Day!
I hope everyone is having an excellent summer!
We have begun whittling and weaving our way to what’s next. If you’d like a looksee, we’ve put together a short film dedicated to new beginnings.
Even heartache has its place in the widening waves of the summer sun. Here’s my two cents about that baloney.
Along with everything else, we’ve put together a summer playlist to score some of the hotter moments within this one-and-only consciousness we’ve been given.
Please allow us to offer you a beach-towel-sized blanket apology for any possible, modest transgressions — because if we forgot to properly hug as we tore off into the heat, it only means that everything is still possible.
Everything is still possible.
Yes. m.
*** If you’re ever looking for more, we’re offering loads of stuff over at Patreon to subscribers. You can pay what you want to participate. I would like to believe it’s not terrible.
Hello!
We’re now going to fully recommence with the name Matt Pond PA. In celebration, we’ve softly rocked the song East Coast E. for you.
We’ll also share a glass of champagne and play a short set on Periscope through our Twitter account on Friday at 9pm EST. (The amazing musician Caroline Reese will start things off with a few songs of her own. Caroline is an incredibly talented songwriter with a beautiful voice. This is going to be a proper party!)
During the transmission we might pause to answer computer questions, if anyone far away is feeling candidly casual in their summer slacks.
The reason for the festivities: It’s been a year since we released The State Of Gold. And while we fully believed in that album, we signed a couple terrible contracts with some slippery beasts. Those agreements terminate on June 30th! (A few more words are shed on the subject over here.)
Starting July, we’re going to record a Holiday EP/LP and re-record Still Summer — rebuilding our small canoe of bird calls and striking out into the uncharted future. We’ll try to keep you aware of our baloney both here and on mattpondpa.com.
There will be even more baloney over on Patreon, where we are no longer The Lowlifes — we are only ourselves. (I know that subscription-based support for a couple of dingdong musicians may not seem like your favorite way of spending money. Still, I believe we’ve really accumulated and achieved a lot over there. Tons of free music, exclusive videos, pics, physical correspondence, discounts on merch and rambling dreams about what it means to search for what can never be known. There will also be vinyl offers on our upcoming releases!)
I’m not totally certain what we’re doing on this planet. But we’re doing it.
Along this strange and amazing field-trip, your participation is both welcome and appreciated.
Thank you very much for reading and listening. Si! m.
It’s my everlasting belief that we’re all explorers.
From my living room, here’s the last song from The Nature of Maps, Athabasca. A choreographed expansion on some of some of those earlier expeditions.
And in the midst of spring and on the cusp of the swimming season, here’s a fireside sketch of Summer is Coming.
The song was always supposed to be an orchestrated explosion of hope and liberation. (Even though there’s only two of us in my modest living room and we’re not engulfed in fake smoke on a multi-tiered stage, please trust that my heart and lungs are fully volcanic.)
At the height of the summer, we’ll be free from all the obligations (tentacles) of our previous business partners (monsters). That’s when we’ll be back with properly positive diagrams and maps of the future.
Until then, we’ll continue discussing blue jeans, deep dreams and music on Patreon.
(The Nature of Maps will be over there for download in about a week, along with notes explaining how each song traveled from A to B.)
My compass may be in need of some fine tuning — the wilderness is a wild place.
But I’m never stopping. And I would like to believe the same is true for you, as well.
Here’s to our unceasing adventures!
Yes! m.
Let’s do the time warp again. (Or at least the subtle and strange sway that seems to be second nature in some of these blasts from the past.)
I’m presently cruising up through New Hampshire and Vermont, to the spots that were woven into my earlier years.
The short expedition will culminate in one of the greatest cities in the world, Montreal. Therefore, in an attempt to softly cut footloose, Chris and I also tried a little This is Montreal.
I don’t want to wholly dwell in the bygone days of butter churning and dirt road car-racing. I mostly prefer the headlong launch into the future. But until agreements expire this summer, we’re applying a degree of self-control in the face of the forces of darkness.
Here’s to visions, revisions and the positive powers of fate. Yes! m.
* There’s always more stuff to unravel over here.
** I dove into the abstractions of approaching the future here.
*** Next month, there will be more clarity. And possibly some Summer is Coming as well.
(Here’s a live version of Measure 3 from my living room. And if you’re asking, the answer is yes, I still strongly choose to rock.)
I wrote The Green Fury as a eulogy to a friend of mine from high school. He was younger and maybe even more awkward than me. But he was a force of nature unto himself, rarely shutting up or stopping to think about anything within his path. A pure, unbroken beast.
I’d never put my un-patterned thoughts so directly inside anything I’d written or sung. Because that’s the only way to summon pure, unbroken beasts.
(We’ve released The Green Fury with annotations and extra videos on Patreon, if you’re interested.)
Up until now, I’ve distanced myself from some of the music I’ve made. There’s no end to the critics and the second-guesses flashing up on the teletype in the Times Square of my mind.
But I’ve decided it’s time to stop trying to escape my body and my brains. (I mean, really, it’s not so bad in here. It’s heated and I get to drink as much coffee as I want.)
I also get to speak and be spoken to. By you. Thanks for listening to my baloney. m.