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Slings and Arrows It's the end of the world as Matt Pond PA know it, but they feel fine By Jimmy Drapera&eletters@sfbg.com "It's been the worst couple of days ever," Matt Pond declares. Calling from a tour stop in Rhode Island, the 32-year-old vocalist and guitarist of Brooklyn's Matt Pond PA — the PA in the quintet's name nods to Pond's former home in Pennsylvania — has cause to make such a melodramatic claim. Two nights earlier, after the first show of the band's biggest headlining tour yet, almost all of Matt Pond PA's gear was stolen from its trailer outside Bowery Ballroom, in New York City. Then, heading up the East Coast the following day, the tour van experienced mechanical difficulties that nearly caused the group to miss its second show. "It sucks more than anything," Pond continues. "Right now a bunch of people are probably like, 'Awesome!' and high-fiving each other and selling our equipment. But Gibson lent us some stuff, and we had to buy a few things. But we have insurance, so it's kind of OK. "The shows have been fucking awesome, though," he adds. "Instead of becoming bitter, we're having a lot of fun. Right now we're exhausted, and we have hellish drives ahead of us, but this is what we love to do — even with everything bad that's happened." Perseverance, of course, is nothing new to Matt Pond PA. Toiling in relative obscurity for the better part of a decade, the group has quietly released a handful of increasingly superb chamber-pop albums and EPs that have gone largely ignored by both listeners and critics. Last fall's exquisite Several Arrows Later (Altitude), however, signaled something of a turning point: With that fifth full-length, the band landed on Rolling Stone's list of "10 Artists to Watch" this year, toured with Liz Phair and Guster, and seemed poised to finally receive the sort of attention lavished on The OC–approved peers like the Shins, Stars, and especially Death Cab for Cutie. Given the band's struggles, it's fitting that one of the most frequently recurring themes in Matt Pond PA's music is the navigation of life's trials and tribulations. Throughout Several Arrows Later, Pond layers jaunty, intricately arranged instrumentation — guitar and cello are the driving forces of the band's autumnal sound — with lyrics about overcoming obstacles both emotional and romantic. "I don't think I want to think about it," he sings on "So Much Trouble," a catchy, midtempo meditation on facing your fears, while songs such as "The Trees and the Wild" and "It Is Safe" poignantly express misgivings about the future. Despite such seemingly downbeat subject matter, the band's songs ultimately sound hopeful. As Pond sings on the title track, "I thought I would go further / But several arrows later, we'll be fine." "My lyrics are just [expressing] recognition of, well, I don't want to say that life is shitty, but we've definitely been created to feel frustrated," he explains. "But it's not totally down. Yeah, there are plenty of songs that are out-and-out depressing, but there's [a theme of] redemption and having to get through things — like with us losing our gear and this trouble with the van. It's, like, let's just get through this." It's the sort of determined, thick-skinned approach Pond takes to criticism of his band as well — from music writers who complain that the group sounds too congenial or from disgruntled fans who feel the band sold out by recording songs for The OC. In fact, the two lovely covers Matt Pond PA contributed to that show — remakes of Oasis's "Champagne Supernova" and Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane over the Sea," the latter of which also appears on the group's 2005 EP, Winter Songs (Altitude) — have proved quite contentious. "People think we've bastardized the original songs," Pond insists. "OK, maybe we bastardized Neutral Milk Hotel, but we did it out of love — it's our bastard child. But we did that because we get so much attention for being controlled and orchestrated, so it was like a way of letting go, like, 'Let's work with songs we really, really care about and do them justice, rather than build this thing up from nothing.' " Ultimately, Pond knows that a hubbub over something as unimportant as a cover song — not to mention the stolen equipment, van troubles, and snarky critics — doesn't truly matter in life. What is important, he's learned, is doing what you love no matter what hardships life throws your way. "In the end we just die, and these things that suck should almost be insignificant," Pond says, then laughs. "I don't want to sound like a redneck, but a lot of the record is just me happily saying, 'Fuck it.' We just want to play and write records and have a good time, despite all the shit that's happened." * MATT POND PA Sun/5, 8 p.m. Slim's 333 11th St., SF $13–$15 (415) 255-0333 www.slims-sf.com
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