Hobo Rocket

Pond - Hobo Rocket
Critic Score
Based on 24 reviews
2013 Ratings: #688 / 1115
User Score
Based on 87 ratings
2013 Rank: #359
Liked by 7 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

80
NME

Pond’s fifth album, ‘Hobo Rocket’, bristles with unrestrained creativity and sonic exploration, while verging away from pastoral prog towards a harder garage blues slant.

80
DIY

Allbrook, Watson, Avery, Ryan, and Terry clearly grow newly infatuated with music every time they play a note – ‘Hobo Rocket’ is a genuinely believable, and extremely successful celebration.

70
The Line of Best Fit

It demonstrates that rather than being just a side-project to a more commercially and critically successful cousin, Pond are an entirely different beast in their own right – and no less a force to be reckoned with.

70
Consequence of Sound

Despite the explosive ambition, Hobo Rocket is hastily structured; it’s a departure from the remarkable concision that characterized Beard, Wives Denim.

70
AllMusic

Wide-eyed wonder still intact, there's a lot of depth to explore in the 30 minutes of Hobo Rocket, from bombastic glam, to chugging stoner rock, to colorful psychedelia -- all of it odd as usual.

70
musicOMH

With the tendency to occasionally experiment and deviate, consistency is not forthcoming; that said, when Pond hit the right notes they soar

65
The 405

Much of it is like an unfinished dot-to-dot puzzle. It's sporadic in its charm and cluttered with noise and experimental portions of drug-imbued nostalgic rock. 

60
PopMatters

Pond manages like TSOOL to freshen trippy classic rock tropes with a calm command of the genre, not for 20-minute drum solos or stadium-ready riffs, but with a sense of the unexpected.

59
Pitchfork

Hobo Rocket quickly becomes a collation of the kind of wigged-out studio tricks that Lonerism was notable for avoiding or at least minimizing, an idea of what Tame Impala would be without Kevin Parker’s consummate songwriting and meticulous editing.

50
Tiny Mix Tapes

The execution may be on point, but the personality is absent, the ideas are fewer, and the experience is all-up flat, no matter how raw and flashy the playing.

40
No Ripcord

It’s in their trying to toughen up their candy-colored psychedelia that Pond loses their field of vision, embodying a parodial manifestation of machismo that comes off sounding confused and empty of content. 

R1v3r__
80

me n my homies love the xan-man

Z.Younk
58

Key Tracks: Whatever Happened To The Million Head Collide, O Dharma, Giant Tortoise, Midnight Mass

oernenfilthy
73

I wanna rate this album 80+, but the mix is SO bad I can't bring myself to do it.

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Added on: July 28, 2013