Pond, såväl som Tame Impala, har ofta iklätt sig en musikalisk magic mushroom-mantel. En hippie-inspirerad flummighet. Men nu verkar Nicholas Allbrook, galjonsfigur i förstnämnda band och före detta basist i det andra, ha tröttnat på kaftaner och batik. På torsdag besöker australiern Pustervik och dagen efter släpps Pure Gardiya, ett album han kallar traditionellt, organiskt – och knappt psykedeliskt alls.

Hi Nick!
– Hi, how are you?

Well, it’s ten in the morning and I’m a bit hungover to be honest. What time is it where you are?
– I’m in Perth, in Fremantle, and it’s five past four here. A very gentlemanly hour.

So you’ve got a new record out soon and it’s called Pure … Gardiya? What does that mean?
– It means, like, “outsider” or ”visitor” in the language of the people where I came from up north. It’s like an aboriginal Australian word that they call all white people.

”I’ve spent so much time fucking around in front of a computer screen”

Okay, tell me about the record!
– I recorded it in Melbourne, very quickly and collaboratively. Got in people I really respect, who play instruments I wouldn’t usually play with like cello and acoustic piano. Sort of did it as a traditional, pre-digital-revolution type of thing. Not, like, dogmatically, but I like the idea of keeping it simple. Having all of my songs in my head and in a book and going in and just doing it with some humans. I’ve spent so much time, in every other project, fucking around in front of a computer screen, endlessly polishing turds.

So it’s back to basics, more organic than before?
– Yeah, it was done more organically, in that way, than any record I’ve really done. Except early stuff like Mink Mussel Creek. I‘ve been all about the digital home recording stuff, it’s so enticing and fun, but the reality of being able to do this as an option, I didn’t even really think about it. So, yeah, it was fun.

”I’m a pretty shitty guitarist, so maybe it all sounds like I was on drugs”

Are you going further in the psychedelic direction?
– I mean, if you’re talking about psychedelic in the sense of like tie-dye t-shirts and kaftans and all that sort of shit – all the tropes, all the visual and sonic indicators of the genre – then no, not at all. But i guess if psychedelia is like a feeling of profundity or transcendence, then it kind of depends on who listens to it if they find it psychedelic or not.

I think it just needs to sound a bit trippy. Like you might have recorded it on drugs.
– Well, no, it doesn’t sound that way… or maybe it does, actually. I’m a pretty shitty guitarist, so maybe it all sounds like I was on drugs when i did it.

Ha! So you’re playing Gothenburg on Thursday. What should the audience expect?
– Well, they can expect just me, I’m the only homo sapien on stage, playing my guitar over a bunch of samples, which is my backing band, sitting on a stool next to me, comfortingly. That’s it, I guess. Nick Allbrook playing Nick Allbrook-songs.

Sounds worth a visit!
– Shit, that wasn’t a very good advertisement…

I think it’s enough to entice people to come down, though! Thank you very much for talking to me!
– Not at all, good luck with your hangover!