Pom Poko have shared their high-speed new single, ‘Go’. Check it out below.
The “daring” new song follows the release of singles ‘Champion’ and ‘Growing Story’, all taken from the band’s recently announced upcoming album third ‘The Champion‘, which is set for release on August 16 via Bella Union.
Discussing the technicalities of the track, the band joked: “Somehow we ended up writing an instrumental that ended up being nearly impossible to play.
“We ended up combining string harmonics in both guitar and bass with uneven musical periods at a breakneck speed, which is a daring choice to say the least. This will be a fun – and challenging! – song to play live.”
Drawing from similar themes to previous offering ‘Growing Story’, which touched on “growing up […] and finding yourself in a place where you realise you can contain a lot of different stuff at the same time”, ‘Go’ is inspired by feeling overwhelmed by life.
“This song is about the times when you feel like your life is just a never-ending messy to-do list, or like unorganised cleaning, you just do a lot of stuff and when you take a breath you don’t understand what you did or if you cleaned anything at all,” the band explained. “And you can’t think of any solution but to run away.”
Reflecting on the new album, which will be their first self-produced record, drummer Ola Djupvik said the band are now “at the point where we can work, like, telepathically”.
He continued: “While making the album, we talked very little in the studio, and there was very little artistic intention that we had to convey to each other. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do. Maybe when we’re trying to communicate with a producer, we tend to cram in a lot of ideas, whereas now it’s like, ‘This is the song.’”
“We trust each other more now that we’ve written a lot of songs together and know each other so well,” agreed lyricist and vocalist Ragnhild Fangel Jamtveit.
“For me, at least, you see things clearer when you have a bit more space. When you start a band in your early twenties, everything is being thrown in your face, you can’t really see what’s going on, and you just keep running. At the end of the day, these songs are about us, and the value of our friendship.”
The Norwegian art-rockers also recently announced a UK tour for October – check out the dates below and buy tickets here.
OCTOBER
7 – Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms
9 – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
10 – Hebden Bridge, Trades Club
11 – Blackpool, Bootleg Social
12 – Middlesbrough, Twisterella Festival
14 – Glasgow, Mono
15 – Newcaste, Cluny
16 – York, Crescent
18 – Sheffield, Sidney and Matilda
19 – Birmingham, Future Days Festival
20 – Ipswich, St Stephen’s Church
‘The Champion’ marks Pom Poko’s third LP following acclaimed debut ‘Birthday‘ and the follow-up ‘Cheater’. In a four star review of the latter, NME wrote that the Norwegian four-piece “make every few seconds feel like a cliffhanger”, adding: “They’ve turned the weird up further still, and are all the better for it.”
