Matt Pond PA – Still Summer

Summer doesn’t end if you don’t want it to, if you don’t believe it has to....
Matt Pond PA : Still Summer
7.8 131
2017 

Matt Pond PA : Still SummerMatt Pond has always been an artist in touch with nature. Despite the synthesizer detour he took on 2015’s State of Gold (QRO review), he’s more the kind of musician who plays shows with foliage on stage (QRO live review). He may be long since past breaking through to the big time, but his uplifting Matt Pond PA power-pop delivers on the very natural Still Summer.

In these days of August (particularly this August…), it can be easy to feel that the days are getting shorter and times are getting darker, but Matt Pond PA pushes against that with powerful uplift on Summer songs such as “A Spark”, “The Ballad of Mike and Laura” (which features Laura Stevenson), “Rabbit”, and the title track. The album is also littered with beautiful instrumentals (though perhaps too many), and ends with KC Three nicely describing growing up on the river in Natchez on “Saint Catherine’s Creek”.

Supposedly Still Summer is Pond’s last release under the ‘Matt Pond PA’ moniker that he’s had for almost two decades now, but he promises to keep putting out new music in some form (he put out The Lives Inside the Lines Inside Your Hand under his own name in 2013 – QRO review). Summer doesn’t end if you don’t want it to, if you don’t believe it has to.

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