Ponderosa

Richard in Your Mind’s fourth album is an immersive journey through Richard Cartwright’s musical comfort zone as well as his luxurious sense of contentment, writes DOUG WALLEN.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Richard in Your Mind have taken us into volcanoes and even the very sun, so it’s only natural to wonder where Richard Cartwright and his band might lead us next. The answer, on this fourth album, is deep into the heart of their comfort zone. Cartwright sounds more at ease than ever – and he has always sounded pretty damn at ease – as he nestles away in his Blue Mountains home studio to explore that comfort zone.

Cartwright starts by triangulating a sweet spot between The Beatles, Beck and beat-friendly instrumentals. Then he tips his hat to day drinking on ‘Hammered’ – a self-contained two-and-a-half minute single that recalls overlooked ’90s beat-poppers Sukpatch – and sings with his wife Katie on the cosy sea shanty ‘Crew of the Neptune’. The sitar comes out on the immersive opener ‘Love Grows’ and the nice but inconsequential ‘Four Leaf Clover Salad’, while dusty drum breaks mark ‘Byrdman’ and the title track. It’s telling that even the vocal tracks are instrumental for long stretches; Cartwright is deep in his groove, exploring each tangent’s heady potential rather than worrying about typical song structure.

The whole album passes like a daydream, which can be a good or a bad thing. It generously fills up the air around us while we’re listening, offering soupy layers from across different genres and decades. But it can dissipate as soon as it’s finished, with not much of lasting significance by which to remember it all.

“One minute we’re floating on clouds, the next we’re fleeing demons.”

But for all the feel-good mellowness of ‘Love Grows’ and ‘Shooting Star’, Richard in Your Mind also explore the bad-trip side of things. ‘Good Morning’ is a Beck-ish collision of ticklish ear candy and doom-y noise and growls, with a sort of gurgling, underwater coda to boot. ‘My Volcano’ – perhaps a title track left off their AMP-nominated 2010 album of the same name – similarly indulges in chaos, ranging from fuzzed edges to dank Sabbath cues and even blasts of Atari Teenage Riot-esque electronic noise. That all of this is on the same record as a song as sweet as ‘Look You Gave’ – sample lyric: “I fell asleep in the Tunnel of Love” – or an entire midsection as chill as this album’s (see ‘What It’s All About’) reminds us how much ground RIYM can cover while still sounding exactly like themselves. One minute we’re floating on clouds, the next we’re fleeing demons.

Cartwright’s wry natural wit – remember that chai video? – comes through best on ‘This Is House Music’, a gently self-aware highlight that indulges in record scratching and yet more beats. Cartwright seems so pleased with the lyric “A carnival of electric palominos/Have you seen those?” that he says it a second time, quietly relishing the harmony of the two halves together.

“It can feel more like a kaleidoscopic beat tape than a pop record.”

Ponderosa has no shortage of those kind of winsome details; in fact, it’s chockers with them. And it does feel like a genuine journey, especially as we wind down with the lovely stripped-bare ballad ‘Skull Sized Kingdom’ and the short and trickling instrumental farewell ‘Leaf’. But while it’s all real nice on the ears, it doesn’t always add up to something more satisfying. Much of it can feel more like a kaleidoscopic beat tape than a pop record. But all the same, you wouldn’t want to make Cartwright choose one path or the other. It’s his hummable, amiable bringing together of strange spheres that defines this band.

It’s his comfort zone after all, not ours, so don’t expect this album’s very particular parameters to always match up with your mindset. But when you’re in the right mood – not necessarily with the aid of chemical enhancement, although it would surely help things along – Ponderosa can be like catnip for the brain. And even when you’re not in the right mood, Cartwright’s luxurious sense of contentment might actually bring you around in the space of a few songs.

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‘Ponderosa’ is out now on CD, vinyl and digital through Rice Is Nice. Launch tour dates below.

Fri, Oct 17 – The Lansdowne Hotel, Sydney, NSW [free]
Sat, Oct 18 – The Commons, Newcastle, NSW
Fri, Oct 24 – Transit Bar, Canberra, ACT
Thurs, Oct 30 – Beach Hotel, Byron Bay, NSW
Thurs, Nov 6 – Shebeen, Melbourne, VIC
Sat, Nov 8 – Baroque Bar @ The Carrington Hotel, Katoomba, NSW