Review: POND/Myriad Sun @ Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, February 11, 2022
It’s a land of confusion.
While WA has had a relatively fortunate time in the Covid-19 era in comparison to every other state around the country, it’s certainly affected established touring bands from these parts and left the local industry on tenterhooks. The WA Government’s backdown on a February 5 border opening and the (all too) popular debut of omicron have thrown notions of the now-and-the-soon into peril, with Fremantle venues suffering their quietest start to the year in many New Years.
This Perth Festival opening-night event provided rejuvenation and no lack of refreshment. POND are part of Fremantle’s cultural royalty and beloved in the mix of all things. There’s a quirk in the kick but their intent for meaningful connection is something to behold and this extends to the choice of support act, Myriad Sun. Fronted by Nelson Mondlane (POW Negro, Super Ego), a human explosion of art, dance and defiance, the trio revel and roll through atmospheric dirges through to hip hop and drum & bass surges via keyboards, beats, samples and sax as Mondlane, a tall, young black man on this night covered in scorched-earth-red body paint, white coat and skirt, plus a blonde bobbed wig ululated through the proceedings.
As his bandmates performed anonymously in variations of hazmat (this look of choice pre-dated the coronavirus) Mondlane’s red skin adornment bled into his blonde wig and white attire, as he inhabited a range of personas, from angular alien to Aussie-as-mate. The results were both confronting and comforting, especially more the latter as he implored the crowd to care for each other over the course of the evening. The audience had built considerably by the end of their set, but it seemed a shame that more hadn’t witnessed the hit-ness of Myriad Sun a little earlier.
‘That was some of the best fucking shit I’ve witnessed in a long time’ POND frontman, Nick Allbrook, stated at one point during the band’s headline set. Indeed, the sense of community on the Fremantle Art Centre’s South Lawn was a testament to the windswept locale’s cultural and social togetherness. POND hadn’t played a live gig since forever-ago in 2021, and one got the feeling as Allbrook greeted the crowd with a casual ‘it’s been a while, hasn’t it?’, that the band needed this just as much as the audience.
America’s Cup was a prescient opening number for the location and circumstances, pondering Freo’s gentrification upon the 1983 clinching of the Newport Yacht Club’s grasp of the Auld Mug and 1987’s failed defence. But it was not so much winged keel as winged-heels, with Allbrook fleet of foot across the stage and gliding over foldback speakers. It’s widely believed that Mick Jagger studied the movements of both James Brown and Rudolph Nureyev to arrive at his hip-shake-hybrid.
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Whomever Allbrook has studied is anyone’s guess, but whatever it’s turned out to be, it’s him, as Tasmania and recent single, Human Touch, attest. It mightn’t be graceful, but he has a grace of his own, and he speaks with sincerity and conviction about the environment and Indigenous rights to an audience who want to hear it.
Other observations such as ‘this is a cold old fucking song written in the days when we lived in a share house in Dalglish and had the lyrical precision of a carrot’ might not inspire huge confidence, but the singalong factor in the moshpit was all this-is-the-soundtrack-of-our-lives kinda stuff as Don’t Look At The Sun and Sweep Me Off My Feet already had the youngsters pondering the length of their salad days.
From the recently-released 9 album, Pink Lunettes showcased the band as a tight, funked up outfit versed in the knowledge of dance-and/or-filling-floors. Jay ‘GUM’ Watson on bass/keyboards, Jamie Terry on keys/synth, James Ireland on drums and Shiny Joe Ryan on guitar/guitarmonies/mysterious things plus silhouetted afro were focussed yet clearly loving being back in the moment. A riotous, psychedelic medley through early gems Moth Wings, Giant Tortoise and Eye Pattern Blindness, was followed by 2017’s The Weather, and it was all gravy but somehow topped by tender-set-ender, Toast, surely the greatest ballad never written by REM.
Part of it being so great is that POND aren’t afraid of being the band they wanna be – and it’s not retrospective, it could be based on so many ideas of bands or fire for songs. And there is so much in the way of beautiful fire, as the evening’s finale, Edge Of The World, presented as evidence. Introduced as being ‘specifically for Fremantle,’ it was… it really was. And in these uncertain times this kind of evening was exactly what Fremantle needed. For now and God knows for how long.
