Halcyon eyes, kind of gloomy in-between
(If not now, then when we gonna do it, baby?)
Holy pledge, Nostradamus said we’re clean
(If not you, then who is gonna teach it to me?)
PONS have somehow made a song that sounds as though a demon discovered stimulants, bought an expensive string section, read half a book about Roman emperors, and immediately decided he ought to run for king of hell.
IF NOT NOW… is five-plus minutes of Brooklyn dance-punk delirium built around repetition as both engine and psychological hazard. Jack Parker and company plant a krautrock riff in the floorboards, then proceed to furnish the room with strings, horns, electronic abrasion, post-punk angles, and enough manic forward motion to make stopping seem medically inadvisable. Somewhere between Suicide, Brainiac, Liars, Sextile, and Ecce Schnak, after several catastrophic decisions, PONS turn excess into an organizing principle.
Parker admits that excess comes naturally. “I have a really maximalist impulse when I’m writing music that I’ve recently been trying to get away from.” You can hear him losing that argument in spectacular fashion. The Eclectica String Quartet enters the picture alongside arrangements refined with Steve La Rosa, and suddenly the song has the air of an espionage film whose secret agent has misplaced the microfilm and joined a Dionysian cult instead.
The repetition is crucial. PONS keep worrying the central figure until familiarity starts producing strange side effects, with each return carrying another detail, another escalation, another reason to suspect somebody has slipped something questionable into the punch. Parker wanted “something as repetitive and hypnotic as possible,” and the band stretches that idea toward absurdity without losing its grip on the dance floor.
Lyrically, appetite keeps mutating. Sex, ambition, prophecy, intoxication, history, conquest, divine entitlement, and cultural memory pile together until the speaker begins sounding less like a romantic opportunist than somebody preparing to annex a small republic before breakfast. Desire becomes destiny; destiny develops an ego problem. By the closing stretch, bravery, brutality, providence, and personal mythology have become indistinguishable enough to suggest that civilization may have been a clerical error.
Animator Arturo Baston pushes the same madness into the accompanying video. “Arturo had the idea of animating some sort of nightmare carnival bumper car ride filled with freaks and ghouls,” says Parker. From there, Parker becomes a Ghost Rider-like figure traveling through the underworld on his way toward infernal royalty, because apparently ordinary professional advancement was unavailable.
Watch the video for If NOT NOW… below:
IF NOT NOW… belongs to the forthcoming RACECAR, out November 5 via Casa Gogol Records, Eugene Hütz’s new label. If this single represents the album’s governing philosophy, PONS have built themselves a machine whose accelerator has been welded permanently to the floor. Normies should probably stand clear.
Listen to IF NOT NOW… below and order the single here. You can pre-order RACECAR here.
Catch PONS live:
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Oct 3 Sultan Room Brooklyn, NY
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Oct 4 Monkey House Winooski, VT
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Oct 9 Musica Akron, OH
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Oct 27 The HandleBar Pensacola, FL
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Oct 30 Congresshalle Saarbrücken Saarbrücken, Germany
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Nov 8 Congresshalle Saarbrücken Saarbrücken, Germany
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Nov 21 The Met Pawtucket, RI
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Dec 13 Congresshalle Saarbrücken Saarbrücken, Germany
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Mar 21 Congresshalle Saarbrücken Saarbrücken, Germany
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Apr 25 Congresshalle Saarbrücken Saarbrücken, Germany
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