After a Herculean tug of war with their former label, rockers Matt Pond PA are reissuing their album, The State of Gold, through 131 Records on September 24.
Watch the video for “The State Of Gold, Pt 2” below:
What had once been a musical war has turned into a peaceful transition of power when Matt Pond PA finally got the master rights back to their album, The State of Gold. The band remastered and re-sequenced it in reverse because that’s the way they see the past. It’s the taillights that appear last.
The State of Gold started up when Matt Pond returned to the northeast from Florida and California, back to a mid-winter cabin in Bearsville, NY. Snowbanks were the opposite of sand dunes and he loved it. In January of 2014, the band started writing the music, leaning on polyrhythms and synths to take them beyond our normal routes and boundaries. They were trying to make sounds that could compel a hermit to dance. They were trying to wake the woods.
The band were completely committed, the album was featured on NPR’s First Listen, they were rehearsing like mad, touring the country. And then they began fighting with their record label about everything, and ultimately, for the rights to The State Of Gold. That fight lasted five years. Last December, the label finally capitulated and said, “It’s yours.”
On the release of “The State Of Gold, Pt 2,” Pond states:
“‘The State of Gold, Pt. 2’ is the attempt to outrun myself. I took off for Florida and Oakland to escape the cold, contemplative seasons. The reality is that there are no human palms nor fronds that can fix my gears; I will always be stuck within my troublesome mind. But during the past few years, I’ve learned to like it in here. As long as I treat the people and animals around me with respect and love, it’s actually not a bad place to be.
“Jesse Dufault directed the video; Jen Taylor and Randy Lowenstein ran the footage through the wringer. The simple twist was to sing from lowest points possible—the grass, the gravel, the street, the basement. I grew up in a basement. Adrift on a green shag run and with the constant sound of television in the background, I imagined what was happening in the world above ground.
“Since I left the underworld, I’ve realized that this lifetime is mostly about surviving myself. The subsequent turns that led me to being stuck with the wrong labels, the wrong places, the wrong relationships—they were all my doing. The only way out is self-recognition. Over the last year, we built out the basement to take complete control of our music-driven trajectory. Somehow, I traveled to the edge of the world and back and ended up victoriously underground.”
Preorder The State Of Gold here.
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