Archive for the ‘Pond’ Tag
Compare and contrast – Aurora and Pond
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Anna Lapwood, Aurora, Camden Electric Ballroom, Music, Nick Allbrook, Pond, Royal Albert Hall
Leave a comment I am not sure I have ever been to back-to-back gigs. But last week we went to see Aurora at the Royal Albert Hall (first time going to see something that was not a BBC Prom) and Pond at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, London.
We’ve enjoyed these two sets of artists for many years, but it is only the second time that we have seen either of them – Aurora most recently at Pryzm in Kingston and Pond at Concorde 2 in Brighton (in 2015).
Aurora is a 28-year old Norwegian singer songwriter. She is certainly more than that as this RAH show demonstrates. Her backing graphics (see left) are full-on avant garde. Her songs are political, personal and political and personal. We discovered her music in our search for environmentally-themed songs. Aurora’s most explicit is The Seed “When the last tree has fallen and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no:” But her new Album, Whatever happened to the Heart, is a concept album around the heart as muscle, symbol of love and the beating of our world more generally. It is an opus – all that is needed to navigate a world full of hate, wonder, beauty and opportunity (if we choose to take it).
Aurora is a performer, for sure. She is not Dua Lipa with complex dance routines. She is not really stadium music – the RAH is a big venue and takes immense talent and presence to keep its attention. Tickets sold fast and we were relegated to the Rausing Circle, rather in the heavens. The RAH has something that other venues on this tour do not. That thing is the amazing organ. Aurora somehow got Anna Lapwood (right) to rearranged three songs to incorporate that instrument. For me, at least, that addition was beguiling (I love the organ sound in any case). The three songs – Echo of my Shadow, The River and The Seed – elevated this concert beyond what was already memorable. Anna Lapwood is an Associate Artist at the RAH – but so much more than that). Her joy was captured as she let the organ rip during The Seed.
Aurora also engages with her audience. It is not scripted. It is not “[h]ow are your feeling?”. For example, it is not surprising that she was overwhelmed by a full RAH for her own show (she has performed there before). Aurora will conjure up images that one rarely gets from other artists. “We are told the obvious that the RAH is circular. But then “”…it’s like a soup. It’s round”. And later, in a common monologue about the state of the world she tells us “that we wear our love on our hands like a glove…” There is always some unexpected reference to her personal preferences often involving alcohol and sex. The audience hangs on her every word, despite her being only a Norwegian singer songwriter. To some extent she could be Dua Lipa but chooses not to be.
Pond’s frontman and leader, Nick Allbrook (left) is as charismatic as Aurora, though we know nothing of his politics. His approach to engagement with the audience is to ask it to crowd surf him, three times. He has also come forward and physically touched fans – there were plenty of takers.
Sonically, Pond are loud – don’t even think about going without earplugs. The new 10th album is much more rock than the psychedelia that so attracted me to them 9 years’ earlier. I’m Stung, the title track of the new album, is a corker and is about love, of course. “She’s the one” sums it up nicely.
The band more generally are multi-instrumentalists. Allbrook plays guitar and keyboards – and more recently flute. Though he is no Ian Anderson standing on one leg. He’s more likely to stand on his head. The other two core members of the band, Jay Watson and Shiny Joe Ryan (right) are no extras. Watson started out on keyboards and then moved to drums (percussion is also a significant element of the sonic experience).
The venue could not be more different to the RAH. The Electric Ballroom is a classic venue – a dark hole with bars dotted around the periphery. It is all stand, though there are a few seats on the balcony – though there is nothing to be seen if that is where you park yourself during the gig. It can get very lively and Nick Allbrook wants that of his audience – the more they pogo, the better. For those of us of a certain vintage, that is time to step aside and leave the central floor to others.
These were two exceptional nights. No disappointments. Quite the contrary. And whilst Pond had no organ equivalent, their sheer energy…bearing in mind that they are moving through the age range…cannot help but be infectious, even if only emotionally.
Pond, Concorde 2, Brighton, 15 June 2017
Who or what is Pond? Let me quote Wikipedia: “Featuring a revolving line-up, the band currently consists of Nick Allbrook, Jay Watson, Joe Ryan and Jamie Terry. Pond often shares its members with fellow Australian psychedelic rock band Tame Impala. Jay Watson is a full member of both acts, while Pond band leader Nick Allbrook contributed to both bands from 2009 until 2013. Current Tame Impala members Kevin Parker, Cam Avery and Julien Barbagallo are all former members of Pond, with Parker continuing to work with the band as its record producer.” The other member who I trust was on stage on Thursday was James Ireland on drums?
According to Douglas Adams in the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the loudest band in the universe is Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band; probably not only the loudest band in the universe, but the loudest noise of any kind. Pond come second. Just.
I reviewed their 6th album, Man It Feels Like Space Again, a couple of years ago. Everything I said there is valid for this gig. The songs are probably not that meaningful. The lyrics are hard to hear let alone understand – originally I had thought it was Nick Allbrook’s limited voice, but I was wrong on that. He belted out the lyrics, but the other four just went for it as well. The melodies are there, the song structures are a mixture of classic symmetrics and asymmetric mini operas. Key changes galore. Compelling.
Allbrook is a performer like no other. He is a small package with a compensating stage presence. Be warned, he will throw himself into the audience with a confidence that only comes with extended youth (he’s a nightmare for venue security trying to temper audience exuberance). His guitar is one of the most beaten-up specimens that I have ever seen. I contrast his guitar husbandry with that of Richard Hawley who employs a guitar dresser to tune and pollish them before each performance.
What else did they play? A few tracks from the new album including 3000 Megatons and Sweep me off My Feet.
Both wrap themselves around you – they are a Phil Spector wall of sound without the commercial hang-ups. Whilst I’d love everyone to love Pond, please don’t like them enough to force them into bigger venues. When Allbrook sweats, I need to feel that, too.
Three albums to muse over
One of the delights of driving – and I have to say there are not many – is using the time to introduce myself to new albums. My drive to work takes at worst 80 minutes. That is probably an album and a half. Additionally, I listen to BBC Radio 6 Music. Particularly influential is Mark Riley, one time band member of The Fall. It was through him that I first picked up on Pond, an Australian ‘collective’, located firmly in a modern psychedelia shorn of flower-power nonsense. 
On hearing the track Zond, I investigated further and watched the accompanying video. I have not looked back.
When the CD, Man it Feels Like Space Again, arrived in the post (the local HMV music store did not have it), I positively trembled in anticipation. The first track, Waiting Around for Grace, had all of the driving ingredients. It is loud with guitars, fantastic percussion and keyboard. A couple of verses and an extended instrumental ending, not dissimilar to Zond. At the other end of the album is the title track. It is a mini opera spanning 8 minutes with a guitar riff and melody stitching it all together. The keys change as the mood of the song dives into what must be despair of some sort. I’ve read and watched a number of reviews of the album. Common amongst them is criticism that Pond are not great song writers and the slower tracks do not work as well as the full-on sound assaults – which accounts for most of the tracks. The fact is, one cannot hear the lyrics, certainly not while driving and the CD does not have a lyric sheet. I suspect I did not buy a psychedelia album for its meaningful lyrics. What I would say is, despite frequent key changes, this is one of the most feel-good albums now in my collection.
The same could not be said of Bjork’s Vulnicura. Again, much has been written about this album as it 
records the months before and after her split with her long-time artist partner, Matthew Barney. I inexplicably have all of Bjork’s studio albums and am one of the few people suggesting that Lars von Trier’s film, Dancer in the Dark (2000), in which Bjork starred, is a masterpiece (Bjork is an appalling actor). I have also seen her twice, including her Biophilia show in Manchester in 2013. So, again sat in my van heading to work, this album at 58 minutes fills much more of the time. It needs to be listened to carefully (there is a lyric sheet). The lyrics are painful, though wrapped around what seems to me at least to be seductive melody interspersed with techno percussion. A number of tracks, including the opener, Stonemilker, have string arrangements that are just sumptuous. Stonemilker, to some extent summarises the mood. Taken literally, and 9 months before the split, she likens her efforts to getting milk out of a stone. Her partner becomes more and more unresponsive. It is extraordinarily personal. One feels a bit like a compulsive voyeur. The mood picks up a shade towards the end. Bjork invites Antony Hegarty to sort-of duet with her on one of the more non-linear tracks, Atom Dance. Hegarty’s voice always seems to have a peculiar mix of uncertainty and freedom in it. It works well on this album. The final track, Quicksand, has lyrics including, “if she sinks I’m going down with her”. That’s as optimistic as it gets. Goodness knows what the subject of this album, Matthew Barney, thinks about it.
And then finally, the ever incipient Marina Diamandis, trading as Marina and the Diamonds. The new album is Froot. It is the follow up to the techno Elecktra Heart which works well in the van. A kind of guilty secret. I should not like it, but I do. I was originally taken by her track Hollywood but soon found myself perplexed by her excrutiatingly unique voice. What the voice really needed, I thought, was good songs. Unfortunately, they continue to elude her; though that is not to say that this album is bad. But put to the van test, it lost my attention as it progressed. Though Savages towards the end has much to recommend it. The lyric “Underneath it all we’re all just savages; Hidden behind the shirts, ties and marriages; How can we expect anything at all?; We’re just animals still learning how to crawl” raises an eyebrow. Ultimately. Diamandis’s lyrics need a few more years’ life experience. The voice remains distinctive, but maybe it does not suit pure pop? Bjork is not a bad role model in that respect.
Be informed 