Album review: POND – Sessions
Australia’s favourite psychedelic amalgamation, POND, released their live studio LP Sessions on Friday via Spinning Top/Caroline. Currently on the back of sold-out tours across Europe, the band will return home shortly as support for Mac DeMarco’s national tour this coming January.
The album, which parallels the band’s eighth studio release Tasmania, is a combination of live studio reprisals of tracks stretching their entire discography. Recorded during the European Spring whilst on tour, the album represents the natural transformation their catalogue has taken throughout years of live shows.
“We wanted to capture how the band has been playing live lately and commit that to tape while we were in the middle of a long tour,” says guitarist Jay Watson.
He continues, “As you play the same song for years, or even as a single tour rolls on, the way you play the songs mutates. Little inflections and fills become part of the song, and the structures and even the overall feeling and intent of the songs change.”
The release features a stellar tracklisting and opens with Daisy, which could be very symbolic of the time of recording. You can really hear the Kevin Parker nuances, who was responsible for producing much of their previous record.
Taken from their debut album Psychedelic Mango, Don’t Look At The Sun (You’ll Go Blind) gives out such a pulsating rhythm and, with a hint of Prodigy’s Firestarter, remains a standout performance of theirs. The chemistry and continuity throughout each cut makes it hard to comprehend as a live studio performance, there is just this uncategorisable harmony between band members.
With such a dynamic arrangement of songs from the velvety melodies of Paint Me Silver to the surging cadences in Man It Feels Like Space Again, this astrological anthology really is one of the most well orchestrated live albums ever.
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Catch POND alongside Mac DeMarco at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on 10 January, Festival Hall in Melbourne on 11 January, Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on 15 January and Red Hill in Perth on 18 January.
Review by Travis Jordan.
