Pond Photo by Matsu
‘We all get nostalgic for a time and place 1,000 light years from my mortal innings,” said Nick Allbrook recently. “Now we also live at the BBC, like my nameless-faceless childhood heroes.”
If You Go
Pond, with Cryogeyser, Friday, Dec. 9, 9 p.m., Gothic Theatre, 3263 S. Broadway, Englewood, $27 and up, ages 16-and-over, gothictheatre.com
The former Tame Impala touring member may sound like he was on acid when he said that, but he and his group Pond insist that pot is their drug of choice. Of course, you’d never guess that from their music, which has been known to make the Flaming Lips, with whom Pond has toured, sound like part of the straight-edge movement.
Either way, Allbrook’s enthusiasm for last month’s release of their Live at the BBC EP is justified, another feather in the cap for the Australian band who started out playing small venues as a self-described “Royal Trux-cum-Cream power trio,” and have since gone on to tour with the likes of MGMT and Arctic Monkeys.
Along the way, Pond have continued to gleefully polarize critics, as was the case with last year’s 9 album, which was, in fact, their ninth album.
“The over-long and manic ‘Pink Lunettes’ is crazed from a bad drug trip or just 18 months cooped up, pin-balling around searching for meaning with grating lyrics,” wrote the music publication Glide.
But the more established U.K. magazine Uncut felt otherwise in their review of the same album: “After reaching for Bowie-esque grandeur on the opening ‘Song for Agnes,’ they lock into an INXS-style chromium-funk groove on ‘America’s Cup’ and reimagine The Clash as a synth-punk band on the speed-burner ‘Human Touch.’”
To each their own. Either way, the band is arguably more commercial sounding now than they were in earlier avant-pop efforts like “Man It Feels Like Space Again,” which was sadly retired from their setlist three years ago. (You can still watch its accompanying Sesame-Street-gone-wrong video, and, assuming you don’t mind ultra-violent puppets, probably should.) In any case, this is a band who’ve been known to do live covers of Brian Eno’s “Baby’s on Fire” and a “Jive Talkin’/Paint Me Silver” Bee Gees medley. What’s not to like?