AT THE end of the 2000s, music critics began to latch onto a boom in Australian rock music.

The key figure in this apparent renaissance was Kevin Parker, the lank-haired creative force behind Tame Impala, the group who filter 1960s psychedelia through numerous effects pedal to gorgeous effect. Parker was often flanked on stage by musicians who looked just as elegantly dishevelled and throwback hip as he did.

Only later did it become apparent that some of these figures were members of Pond, another collection of Australian weirdos that had been peddling mind-expanding music before Tame Impala’s success. In fact, Parker at one point drummed for Pond – now he’s just produced their seventh album The Weather in a studio near a beach in the west of their homeland.

“For three weeks we made an everyday work schedule of going in and messing about with the songs, then going to dip our bodies in the ocean, then coming back and working more,” says Allbrook, who was a touring musician for Tame Impala until 2013.

The singer, whose slightly unhinged stage antics have earned him a cult reputation on the alternative scene, adds that Pond formed as a reaction against the “geographical isolation” of their hometown, Perth, which the band have referred to as “the most remote city on Earth” (as elaborated on in new twoparted song Edge of the World).

“We dedicated ourselves to being these brain–borrowing, commune–dwelling psychedelic lunatics,” says Allbrook. The group, also consisting of sometime Tame Impala member Jay Watson, set about making “strobelight-strapped-to-your-forehead, chain-me-to-a-bed psychedelia”. Their influences couldn’t have been much more diverse; Michael Jackson, the Beastie Boys and Led Zeppelin.

It’s a lazy assertion that political music is mostly created by hard-hitting punk bands or rappers, but Pond have shown they are socially aware; no more so on new song 30,000 Megatons about the threat of nuclear destruction. “I look out at the mirror/Look out at the world/30,000 megatons is just what we deserve.”

More generally, Allbrook and co have been thinking about the current identity of Australia, and, by extension, the world. “A lot of the songs are fairly Australian self-reflective,” he says. “They’re about the weird confused place that our white Australian demographic has found itself in – not belonging to this country rightfully, and also being as sure as hell not English – and about this completely empty moral dilemma that seems like it’s everywhere in the world right now.

“If it does get into social issues, however, we definitely don’t pretend to offer any resolution.” This isn’t to say The Weather doesn’t possess Pond’s usual scattershot, bombastic sound, though. Allbrook says that he wanted to throw lots of elements “willy-nilly and abstractly into a big pile”.

He adds: “Kev [Parker] kept telling me the album was actually very focused, though, so I’ll have to believe him.”

Pond, Concorde 2, Brighton, Thursday, 7.30pm, For more information and tickets visit concorde2.co.uk or call 01273 673311