Big Fish, Big (Bardo) Pond

MUSIC

Bardo Pond

at The Middle East

Nov. 10

On Nov. 10, Bardo Pond came to Cambridge and filled the Middle East with bodies and with sound. The Philadelphia band strode on stage and worked the crowd with distortion on top of distortion, leaving heads cloudy, ears shaking, and hands clapping.

Doing a fine job of complementing Bardo Pond were opening bands Auto 66 and Poem Rocket. The former, playing to a sparse 9:30 audience, was a perfectly satisfactory opening trio who jammed a lot, though more softly and with less distortion than Bardo Pond.

Poem Rocket, however, went above and beyond the call of opening band duty. The New York City band turned up the volume and cranked out a set of serious rock songs. Their songs were heavy on the drums and guitar, giving the show a much needed kick. And the songs were tuneful as well, with nice harmonies between the guitarist and bassist.

"Playing like a man possessed" may be a rock clich, but Poem Rocket's guitarist deserved the tag. He glared at the audience through fierce, bulging eyes, and at numerous times the veins on his head seemed ready to explode. He was certainly an intimidating presence on stage, but he became an even greater menace when during one song he jumped off the stage and stared various members of the audience down face to face as he shook a little shaker ball to the drummer and bassist's beat.

Aside from the showmanship, Poem Rocket had some experimental musical moments as well. At one point, the bassist took a drum stick and rubbed it along her bass strings, giving off a fuzzy hum that sounded not too bad. But their ultimate claim to fame lay with their spectacle of a guitarist.

But the crowd was there to see the headliners, and it showed. The audience comprised mostly men, wearing a lot of grungish clothing, a far cry from the fashion statements sometimes on display among Middle East audiences. But regardless of their looks, they were satisfied, responding positively not just to the band they had come to see but also to Poem Rocket.

To get the skinny on Bardo Pond, you might want to look up some of their terminology. Among the band's releases are albums entitled Bufo Alvarus and Aminata, words for hallucinogenic frogs and magic mushrooms, respectively. Their individual songs tend to focus on subjects such as Tibet, Buddha and outer space.

Thus, as expected, Bardo Pond's songs were indeed long and trippy; on Wednesday night most lasted close to ten minutes. They were laced with numerous guitar solos and fuzzy distorted interludes, which provided a solid bed of noise upon which interesting stuff happened. Most of that consisted of various sounds produced by lead singer Isobel Sollenberger--not just from her voice, but also from her flute and violin, which consistently gave the tunes some high-pitched variation. Although her lyrics were totally incomprehensible, her voice sounded quite nice as a complement to the rest of the band, which was loud and distorted.

Aside from Sollenberger, the band features guitarists John and Michael Gibbons, bassist Clint Takeda and drummer Ed Farnsworth, substituting for Joe Culver who is busy being a father. fter several releases on lesser known labels, Matador Records has been putting out their music since 1997. They list among their influences the Velvet Underground and the Blue Oyster Cult, who incidentally were playing downstairs at the club that night.

Playing music mostly from their last two albums, Lapsed and Set and Setting, Bardo Pond played a set that steadily increased in energy. Opening with "Tommy Gun Angel" and featuring "Walking Stick Man" and "Datura," they finally broke out the rock with a fine version of "Again." Unfortunately, the end of that song, occurred at 12:30a.m., closing time at the Middle East. So it was sad that at the pinnacle of energy for the show, it all came to a stop--a big disappointment for both an energetic band and the audience that came to see them.