There’s a lot of great music coming from the Aussies lately and the band simply known as Pond is no exception. Having four touring members of Tame Impala undeniably gives them a boost of notoriety. They’re from the same musical community that once all shared houses and still share a record label. However their live show spoke for itself this past Tuesday night at Sinclair as they kicked off and embarked on their first headlining tour of the states. We also got a chance to catch up with lead guitarist Joseph Ryan to pick his brain about how Pond came to be, their upcoming record, and being a broke up-and-coming band.
Pond started out as a collective that welcomed friendly musicians to participate in recording and touring but is now a set in stone line up. “We found it difficult to progress, because no one really knew the songs, so we had to get a fixed line up.” With that being said Pond seems to be the brain child of Ryan and lead singer/songwriter Nick Allbrook and when it comes time to tour, they still simply recruit their friends to fill in the holes of some of their over the top studio production. Those friends just happen to be in one of the most successful rock bands to come out of Australia in the past decade.
Categorizing them as a psychedelic glam rock outfit is aptly put even if Ryan denies it. “I don’t really know what that word means anymore, people just think of Grateful Dead when you say it, I don’t know what we’re trying to be like, maybe an MGMT type, but failing horribly.” Regardless of what Pond may be going for, they twist ears through impressive pedal effect footwork and bombastic fuzzy bass lines that made me happy I still had some lysergic diethylamide swooshing around in my spinal cord. Its true that psychedelic music these days is more closely associated with the jam acts in their attempts to recreate the vibes and styling’s of that definitive acid-era of musical history. But Pond’s approach is more along the lines of what you would mean if you were to say that Zappa and Zeppelin were psychedelic rather than the Dead of Allman’s. Either way, they seem to be motivated to get away from this classic sound and promise a more progressive approach on their next release. “there’s only so much you can do with a guitar” said Ryan.
Tuesday’s show mostly explored material off of their latest release 2013’s Hobo Rocket which apparently is a “ kind of a silly album to come into the fold on…it’s a bit more bombastic than our other work, we had sort of a lot of songs we kind of jammed them out as we recorded them.” Despite the fact that their most recent work came out over a year ago, the first headlining run in the states is still very much a promotional venture to introduce themselves to their new found audience in the wake of Tame’s success. “I think we’re getting paid about $375 for the whole run paid out in $15 daily per diems.” Even if this seems grim, you would think the guys in Pond we’re getting paid big bucks if you measured the amount of fun they appeared to be having on stage Tuesday.
They played to a half-filled Sinclair and Ryan came glammed out in a shaggy seventies fur collar coat that matched his big frizzy fro. His restless energy on stage is evident by constant pacing and dancing the entire band seemed pumped to be having a thrown down rock party on a Tuesday. The show started off with the thumping bass line of the opening track “Whatever happened to the Million Heads Collide” and Pond was clearly well rehearsed and ready to go. They have signature tempo changes interrupted by Jimmy Page-like riffage and it got the crowd jumping from the very beginning. “Giant tortoise” slowly strapped everyone into the Pond spaceship and launched the crowd into outer space by the time the heavy stomp box riff kicked in and plays out as the chorus on one of their most well known songs. “Don’t like at the sun or you’ll go blind” was a dark freak out that had me literally squinting. This song sounded exactly like what I would imagine playing at the gates of hell and I almost had to step out for a second from a bad acid trip nostalgia anxiety attack. I wish I was joking, but thankfully the song wasn’t that long and “Fantastic Explosions of time” seemed to get myself and everyone else bouncing again. “You Broke My Cool” was the only kind of groovy basic rock song of the night and I enjoyed its simplicity in comparison. They closed the show with the epic soundscape “Frond” the title track from their 2009 release in which concluded with someone jumping on stage to give them a Pond street sign.
In the end, if you’re looking for a contrast to Tame Impala though, which I assume you are, Pond’s ability to get a bit darker, and get a bit more sinister with their material, especially the older stuff, is what sets them apart. Allbrook is a little reminiscent of a Sid Vicious brit-punk type character, but actually a talented musician and seems to bleed rock music. He did gab on and on with a bit of blah blah nonsense banter that he could of spared us, but other than that he captures the essence of what it means to be a charismatic front-man.
There are a lot of similarities though. The energy and weirdness of Tame Impala show was there. The tenchni-colored broken TV graphics behind the band enhanced the performance just like the graphics of a Tame show, and whether they like it or not because they both use the patented flange and delay pedal on almost every song, there are major elements that sound like them too. Not that that’s a bad thing at all, if you like them then Pond is going tickle your fancy with a little bit more of a straightforward psych-glam rock approach, so in other words, it’s pretty fucking great.
