Kicking off the first night of a two night sold out stand at The Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles, Pond made their way to the stage for their signature emphatic performance that spanned their glorious discography. We were there to recount the greatness, so please enjoy our full review and photo gallery below.

Marking our 10th total time seeing the band over the past 6 years, it continues to boggle our collective minds how Pond keeps getting better and better. Still fresh in our minds from last year, but we’ve been patiently waiting to see a handful of songs off of 9 be played. Well, in typical fashion, they took the stage and immediately busted out two of our favorites off the record, “America’s Cup” and “Human Touch”. Getting everyone in the mood wasn’t a difficult task considering so many fans have been waiting for this show for such a long time. We were lucky enough to cap off our Desert Daze experience with their midnight show, but honestly it never gets old seeing them slay their performances.

This show was a little different however, considering their drummer James Ireland unfortunately had to have an emergency surgery about a week ago. Instead of canceling the tour, thankfully they were able to get him replaced with James Richardson of MGMT. It’s always going to be a tough task learning new songs literally on the fly, but with the help of Pond’s multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson to take over at certain points in the set, it was a unique experience that we’ll hold closely. Through nearly an hour and a half of straight jammy goodness, the band continued to rip through some of their classics off The Weather, Man it Feels Like Space Again, Tasmania, and many more.

Considering they’ve literally got 9 albums in which every song is an absolute hit, they never miss with their setlists, because reasonably how could they? There’s always going to be songs that you wish they played, but ultimately that just means you’ve got to see them everytime they come to town. To close out the set, they played the incredibly funky “Don’t Look At The Sun Or You’ll Go Blind”, a crowd favorite. However after thinking it was over, frontman Nick Allbrook took the stage to claim they were going to do something they’d never practiced and was a little unorthodox. For the next four minutes of our lives, they covered AC/DC’s “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” and it was actually one of the most insane things to witness ever. Nick’s vocals are amazing as we’ve mentioned countless times in the past, but to hear him hit those notes with his raspiness was the ideal capstone to close out Night 1.

If you’re unfamiliar with Pond’s music, now is the time to do some great exploration into everything they’ve ever made. While the tour is over now, we’ve got a sneaking suspicion they’ll be out there in 2023, don’t miss it!

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