It shouldn't seem easy for a band to stay so mercilessly vital as Pond are nine records into their career.
But with the aptly titled '9', the group have confidently managed to not only maintain but far exceed their prolonged history of successes, blessing fans with their tightest incarnation yet.A group with the energy of a championship football team possessed by God, Pond take to The Triffid stage (7 April) like a raggedy gaggle of mischievous schoolboys.
Launching headfirst into the set, there is an effortless air of conviction following frontman Nick Allbrook's alien chicken strut as he hurls the lyrics of Bowie-fied lead single 'America's Cup'.
"Once again, I'm slipping into my feminine ways – dump creatine and skip leg day. Jump as four titans emerge from underground – debating would you rather be burned or drowned."
These lines are just the tip of '9''s lyrical iceberg, a record drenched with insights boxed in offhand remarks as often they are bawled out in guttural howls.
Ever relevant, vitality drenches Pond and springs forth in the avatar of new single 'Lights Of Leeming', a synth punk slapper with motorik precision cut from the highly anticipated deluxe edition of '9'.
Of the many recent Pond tracks, this is the song which bares the most resemblance to songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson's solo project Gum, saturated in a delectable palate of VHS warble.
By the time electro belter 'Human Touch' thumps out, the crowd is tied up and ready to be bossed around.
En masse, Allbrook arouses a sense of priestly communion, without any need for pastoral pompousness. Leaning into the audience on the hand of a doting fan, he levels with his people as the electrified viscera of '90s EDM is spewed up by the band: "Like a wounded animal, you try to scream – but you just want to sin."
At this stage, Pond have incited a rave riot, now jousting with a thronging Frankenstein of their own creation.
For a band marking the map as one of the greatest of all time, there is a remarkable absence of pretence in the presence of Pond as 2019's grandiose epic 'Burnt Out Star' that cleanses the airwaves with a message of love, both visionary and highly personal.
Throughout the show, there is a resounding feeling of humanisation, even when examining the most extra-terrestrial aspects of the human experience.
And where sibling project Tame Impala forms a four-follower octopus controlled solely by the mantle of Kevin Parker, Pond are truly a five-pointed flaming star, with each corner triangulating to fulfil an equally vital and irreplaceable part. In Pond's case, this dynamic holds as true live as it does in the studio.
The motorised backbeat of drummer James Ireland forms the twitching core of this strange beast, maintaining a metronomic palate, which guarantees the freedom of the rest of the group to paint in vast abstractions over tracks like the fast and loose 'Pink Lunettes'.
The profane and the profound are never far apart with Pond, and the lyrics to 'Take Me Avalon I'm Young' affirm this with cinematic scope. "I don't wanna see your Lindy Hop all across these blood-slicked eaves. We're here to finger God, with dirty dreams – and they're done dirt cheap!"
The interplay between Jamie Terry's angelic synth strings and Shiny Joe Ryan's triumphantly Lennon-esque guitar licks are just two of the ingredients which elevate 'Take Me Avalon I'm Young' to the level of instant classic for Pond.
In ancient Roman warfare, the Testudo – also known as the Tortoise Formation – saw soldiers uniting their shields in such a way that no spear nor sword could break them.
Pond have taken to implementing similar tactics, uniting three of their all-time biggest bangers – 'Moth Wings', 'Eye-Pattern Blindness' and 'Giant Tortoise' – into a mighty-morphing mashup of riff-rock power.
This strategy pays off in spades, giving the audience a fresh dose of old medicine while keeping the set list as tight and punchy as latest record '9' seeks to be.
Rounding out the evening with one of the band's earliest classics 'Don't Look At The Sun Or You'll Go Blind', Pond provide a grimy smattering of krautrock pop to satisfy even the nastiest of lingering disco urges.
With keyboard extraordinaire Jamie Terry manning the arpeggiators alongside Jay Watson's relentless bass throb, the closing track synthesises the powerhouse chemistry of Pond in a climactic flurry of righteous bliss.
If the Rolling Stones had seen 'Bladerunner', grew up in Western Australia in the 2000s, and had faced imminent heat death at the wilted hands of the ignorant from their infancy, this is what it might have sounded like.
For those who've heard the records but are yet to see Pond live – you've only dipped your toes.
Longstanding fans of Pond are no strangers to the band's perpetual evolution, but the latest iteration of Perth's quintessential quintet concretises their rank as the most exciting band in Australia and beyond.
