Pond from Perth

They’ll be here a couple of weeks ahead of the release of their latest full-length album The Weather when they next play San Diego. Pond is a band out of Perth, Australia, a gene pool known for having generated some of rock and roll’s best. But how to describe Pond? The record industry of old would not have known what to do with them. Back in the day when new music filtered down to the masses via record stores, virtually all music had to fit behind a particular category card, or die. Perhaps that’s the one main upside of the digital era: bands today are free to make music without label. But if pressed, I’d call Pond (not to be confused with the long-defunct Pond from Portland) a Beatles-ish punk psych band, and a bunch of nihilists at that.

Fans of Tame Impala will likely also be fans of Pond; the two bands share the same members. Joe Ryan, Nick Allbrook, and Jay Watson started Pond in 2008. Seven albums, some singles, and an EP later, the band has gained a following through repeated touring on the festival circuit. Their first time in America was at the big music-industry conference SXSW a few years ago, which left the rock press here in a lather. Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Spin all posted positive reviews about Pond’s shapeless melodies, about their frantic loudness on the live stage. Like a young frat-house band, Pond is unpolished, but with some very good ideas burning just below the surface.

And, possibly, the rock press fancied Pond’s gloomier leanings: “30,000 megatons,” sings Allbrook, “is just what we deserve.” The fallacy of that argument is the inherent exclusion in it. After all, worldwide destruction of humanity is for everyone else, right? But somehow that flawed logic, set to an overwhelming blast of guitars, unifies.

The Incredible Shagatha and His Moog also perform.