Matt Pond PA rarely fail to fail to surprise and at first blush Several Arrows Later is unsurprisingly unsurprising. Like a teetotaler's Pete Yorn, Pond and his PAs here dour up the mid-Atlantic with the type of mature, restrained, polished yup-pop that ultimately made Tracks make tracks. Sure, MPPA's latest may seem like something a newly savvy freshperson might gladly play in Dad's Lexus RX that first Thanksgiving home, but somewhere beneath their grown-up cellos, glistening vibes, and tenderly yearning vocals, surely there lurks a drooling gonzo freak who isn't playing with a full quiver. Please?
If Pond has a dark side, the first clue would be his 2003 move from Philadelphia, cradle of liberty and Cheez Whiz, to Brooklyn, home of feculence and chicanery and irony's much-feted fetid corpse. But ostensibly NYC-inspired fare like "City Song" and "Brooklyn Stars" proves devoid of all gothic Gotham horror: The former is a strums-and-strings soft-rock ballad; the latter a mellow midtempo plodder with a White Ladder electronic intro. Then again, perhaps Pond's vocals employ some sort of sinister code: "In complete dark-NESS/ I lose ba-LANCE," he somehow rhymes, shortly thereafter referring to "mor-NING." And just try playing it backwards!
"Heard it's modern to be stupid," Pond intones on opener "Halloween". Modernly, on the subsequent "So Much Trouble", he adds, "I don't think I wanna think about it." All the while, his eminently competent band's glossy four-four thrum could just as easily back the newest from Josh Rouse or Joe Pernice. "Concepts are embarrassing," Pond intones with pinched throat over staccato guitars. But whoa-oh-oh, sleepy "Is It Safe" dips a toe into the topic of, could it be, sex: "We'd slip behind the pool and go with nature/ We'd lie beside the chlorine bottles." Um, OK?
So maybe Pond really is just another ordinary-guy exemplar of the ongoing post-Coldplay adult contemporarization of indie, as his ordinary arrangements and ordinarier songs would attest. The catchiest among them is the wistful title track, on which Pond tells himself, "I told myself not to remind me." While "Emblems" scores classic rock points for possessing the title of the previous album, all you really need to know about Several Arrows Later is finale "Devil in the Water". Yup, this is the type of disc that would close with a hushed duet and ponderous "it's over" refrain. Creepy.
