After just releasing 'Stung!', their tenth and most diverse record yet, it's easy to argue that POND are Australia's most important band.
The group's performances this year, both supporting Queens Of The Stone Age and on the 'Stung!' tour so far, have seen them in peak form.
Their set at Northcote Theatre (28 June) is no exception, setting the bar ever higher in terms of both musicianship and theatrics. With minimal foreplay, POND jump-start the crowd with classics 'Daisy' and 'America's Cup'.
The lysergic lovechild of Jagger, Bowie, and Bon Scott, frontman Nick Allbrook commands the stage like no other. Ever-redefining the line between flailing, wailing, self-satire and heartbreaking sincerity, he effortlessly rouses a sense of camaraderie and mutual love for his crowd.
POND's multi-instrumental acrobats James Ireland, Jay Watson, Shiny Joe Ryan and Jamie Terry lay down the tracks with effortless cool. At every turn, the band cushions Nick like a trapeze net, freeing him to dance the tightrope between jester and prophet.
In the first half of their 16-song set, POND whip out 5 new tracks from 'Stung!'. The first of these include the record's early singles, '(I'm) Stung' and 'Neon River'.
Like several cuts from 'Stung!', 'Neon River' sees a welcome return to shared lead vocal duties, which have been sparse since 2017's 'The Weather'. In my recent interview, the band have made reference to two recurring gags which guided their recent albums - "full-Reznor," and "full-LARPing" (Live Action Role-Playing). At the Northcote Theatre, Jay wistfully demonstrates the latter concept, singing:
Bathed in golden hour, atop a distant tower
My love, my love
See them seated down, to watch another spell
Performed, performed. Adore...With this incantation, Snow White Nick rouses from his slumber on the beer-soaked floor, possessed by supernatural vigour. Now sporting a crowd member's white cowboy hat, he lights up the stage like a jim-dandy gunslinger.
Live, the song's deceptively intricate drum groove becomes more apparent, with Ireland's snare hits providing snappy punctuation to its guitar and vocal hooks.
The co*cksure chorus of 'Neon River' treads back to a carefree, psych-heavy sound, one on which POND haven't leaned since 2015's 'Man It Feels Like Space Again'. Though perhaps coincidental, there's no denying its poignant contrast with the mediaeval melancholy of Jay's verses.
Soon comes the nasty little funk freak 'So Lo', gyrating with a sickening breed of sass. A greasy banger haunted by sinister undertones, it embodies the 'full-Reznor' credo, with its 'I'm Afraid Of Americans'-esque groove punctuated by sleazy guitars, reminiscent of David Bowie's 'Fame'.
All this suffering is all a part of being
Making sense at all seems so Sisyphean
And I pray that my dying is freeing All this linen makes me feel so European!Live, 'So Lo' is especially naughty. Each whip-crack of Ireland's air-tight disco beat sends spank-waves into the crowd, meanwhile Terry's unwashed bassline investigates every inch of space between the kick and snare. In tandem, Watson and Shiny Joe's guitars tickle and scratch, building up to a revelatory, Robert Fripp-meets-Adrian Belew guitar sendoff.
There's an unmistakable, unfakeable chemistry about a band so deep into their career. Though showing no signs of weariness, it clearly doesn't hurt that POND have a slew of phenomenal tunes to debut, with double album 'Stung!' featuring 14 new tracks. Among these, you'll find single-verse morsels like the 37-second 'Stars In Silken Sheets', nestled among epics including the 8-minute odyssey, 'Edge Of The World Pt. 3'.
A major standout among this fresh batch is the brooding prog of 'Black Lung'. A far cry from Zoolander, here, POND conjure the essence of dryness, screaming into the mines of madness with a tongue only half in-cheek.
With Nick manning the synth, Jay and Shiny's guitars pace with an ominous gait, setting a grim scene before 'Black Lung' erupts into what could be Allbrook's most powerful vocal performance to date.
Reverting to the introduction's gothic moonwalk, Nick repeats his introductory verse through a child's toy megaphone. This lends a poetically detached, robotic contrast to his defiantly human roar, before the band lash against this depressive episode with another fit of Zeppelin-esque moose knuckling.
Give me sweet sweet nothing
Whispered with a forked tongue
I'm 35 and might start LARPing
If I shake this black, black lungIn a left-turn finale, Jay returns to lead vocals, commandeering the schizoid vacillations with a red-eyed, dudes rock riff-off. This heaven-reaching, 'everything's going to be trippy forever' passage feels too good to be true, and the song's last-minute pivot back to its sullen intro confirms that suspicion.
This is one of POND's best songs to date, both live and on record. Though new to the stage, every track from 'Stung!' runs with the engine of a well-oiled machine.
Following the gear-shift of 'Black Lung', many tunes on the album possess a reflective quality – both in their subject matter, and in their titles.
The most obvious of these retrospective references is, of course, 'Edge Of The World Pt. 3'. However, connections also extend to 'Boys Don't Crash' ('The Boys Are Killing Me'), 'Last Elvis' ('Elvis Flaming Star'), 'Stars In Silken Sheets' ('Burnt Out Star'), and 'Fell From Grace With The Sea' ('Waiting Around For Grace').
I asked James if this was intentional, but he said I'd have to ask principal lyricist, Nick. Maybe Nick just likes those motifs, and I'm going a little 'Paul is Dead' conspiratorial – but it certainly fits in with some of the themes on the record – and as one of rock's greatest lyricists, it'd be careless not to pore over Allbrook's words.
Nick is possessed by the power to convey the sacred, the profane, the propane, and the insane in the span of a single verse. On 'Stung!', he continues exploring themes of good-humoured hedonism, juxtaposed with climate anxiety, cultural guilt, and displaced identity in the wake of colonial history. This time however, he frames it all around a very specific, life-changing heartbreak.
Though not yet performed on the current tour, the most visceral example of this is the record's penultimate track, 'Elephant Gun'.
And you wouldn't believe how low I've sunk
I didn't get burnt, and I didn't get drunk
Something in my heart just dried right up – blood don't spill from a frozen cup
Now I don't cry, I just kind of leak
I should've just stayed in bed that week
Should've cut my arm, or starved myself
I'm so sick of performing for someone elseThis is probably the most raw, unfiltered, and personal Nick has ever been on a POND record. In both instrumental texture and plainspokenness, it bears resemblance to his underrated solo work, the most recent of which being 2023's 'Manganese'.
Contradicting 'Elephant Gun' regarding Nick's feelings about performing, a thunderous performance of 'Aloneaflameaflower' shows a band more than happy to touch up their roots. With Jay now on drums and James switched to keyboards, POND tap back into the raucous, feral energy that makes 'Hobo Rocket' so dangerously exciting.
On previous tours, POND interpolated sections from fan favourites like 'Eye Pattern Blindness' and 'Moth Wings' into performances of the riff-rock odyssey that is 'Giant Tortoise'.
This time around, diehard fans are treated to a snippet of 'Torn Asunder' blended into 'Giant Tortoise'. This deep cut is a highlight from perhaps the band's most underrated record, 'FROND'. Maybe we'll get 'Sunlight Cardigan' or 'Mussels Tonight?' weaved in next?
Speaking of throwbacks, in my recent interview with James, we mentioned mutual love for 'Medicine Hat' – Shiny Joe's psych country masterpiece from 'Man It Feels Like Space Again'. To quote James: "...bring back 'Medicine Hat', I say," – and that's exactly what they've done, for the finale at several recent shows across the USA.
The Melbourne crowd, however, are served a one-two punch encore of the band's most club-friendly grooves, commencing with 'Hang A Cross On Me'. "New South Wales and Hollywood are burning piles of brittle wood, cocaine dreams. Making movies, making songs, gnashing teeth and glitter bombs and brightly feathered queens."
A lead single-worthy bonus track from '9', the song hits with one of POND's punchiest electro grooves, with heavy synth bass and arpeggiators lilted by carefree, Madonna-meets-Primal Scream keyboards in the chorus.
Before lunging into the track, they dedicate it to the memory of the dearly departed Cowboy John, a friend of POND for many years (also having featured on the 'Hobo Rocket' title track).
'Hang A Cross On Me' is another high watermark live experience, an emblem of POND's quest to simultaneously fight, embrace, and alchemise our collective cognitive dissonance into something unifying.
Speaking of '9' bonus tracks, fingers crossed POND wheel out 'My Funny Serpentine' some time – if only to deliver the lines: "He burst from the room with a labrys hung from his scrotum and a wreath around his waist / Jumped on the table licking his lips and said, 'I'll show you really f...ing bad taste'."
After 'Hang A Cross On Me', POND deliver their final sendoff. Psych disco banger 'Don't Look At The Sun (Or You'll Go Blind)' fizzes and pops like the unspecified remnants of a baggy found on a nightclub floor. In bidding farewell, Nick descends into the crowd for the fifth or sixth time of the night, offering up the mic to sweat-drenched dancers for a brief rendition of 'I See You Baby' by Groove Armada.
In keeping with the retrospective theme, I'll mention this is the fourth article I've written about POND, and my seventh time seeing them live. In fact, my very first live review centred around POND's headlining set at Jungle Love 2018.
What I'm getting at is that, after 16 years, I'm really glad POND are still around. They're still expanding their sound, still making some of the world's most vital and raw music, and still waving the freak flag harder than anyone else. I love this band, and you really should too.
For a group over 15 years into their career, it's inspiring to see them command such vigour and finesse, maintaining their edge while pushing the envelope with every era.
Without a doubt, POND are a rare breed – a band that will always give you what you need, while never failing to leave you wanting more.
