It's a downhill van

The wonderful thing that is Soulseek has recently reacquainted me with a handful of my favorite albums from the past that I had lost along the way. Most of the stuff I've recently been DLing were tapes and cds I bought at places like Tinley Record Swap and Parasol (the house, not the mail order) in Urbana. Getting back to some of these albums is like sitting down with old friends after years of not crossing paths for no real reason.

My latest find was Pond's The Practice of Joy Before Death. This album always sat in the background of their discography for me, possibly for the reason that it was their "experimental" album and wasn't chalkfull of immediately catchy songs like their first and last efforts. Listening to it over the past day reminded me of the beauty of Pond's songwriting, especially the jagged but complimenting writing styles of Chris Brady and Charlie Campbell. Pond isn't a band I'd ever forgotten about, in fact I posted a 7" gem of theirs a while back. I had sort of forgotten about this album though and haven't spent time with it in probably 7 or 8 years.

The song that does it for me on this album is called "Van." It's a short song with weird lyrics. But for me it somehow captures that relationship a band can have with their van. I owned and maintained the Wolfie van for a good number of years. It was a 1987 Chevy. Beyond emptying mine and the band's pockets numerous times for repairs it drove us to many amazing shows and through a lot of weird parts of cities and foggy East Coast hills.

Pond - Van - mp3

it's a downhill van with lots of room and standard air
smokes an awful lot but so does our drummer plus he swears
it won't be cheap to grind valve seats in the silver bow in our van's hair