Stuck in the Muddle
Not even cornball jokes and quantum theory can deflect the infinite ennui of Bardo Pond
By Cole Coonce
A proper micro-review of some pop-music combo's live performance should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Three acts, as it were, in three or six paragraphs, give or take. Although CityBeat prides itself on professional pop-music reportage, it is difficult to be arsed with such formula when the act under scrutiny doesn't bother with any sense of pacing, dynamics, and proper cadence of its own.
Such was the case with indie-rock dirge chimps Bardo Pond at the Fold at the Derby on Sunday. The Philadelphia-based coed combo under-wowed the curious, yet inexplicably sated the less-than-SRO faithful, as the group started its set in the middle, cut to the middle, and then, as a denouement, ended in the middle. Or muddle. However you want to spell it, it was as if these guys (and gal) were driving on the 405 in a '70s-vintage Ford Econoline with a three-speed stick mounted on the steering column, but the transmission had dropped both low and high gear, leaving Bardo Pond with only second. I'm sorry, but that is no way to get through traffic. Or life. (More on that later, kids.)
Okay, enough metaphor. Time for specifics. The band is comprised of five or six people in need of haircuts and wardrobe consultation. Chanteuse-slash-flautist-slash-anti-vixen Isobel Sollenberger minor-keyed her way through a slew of tunes from Bardo Pond's new ATP release, On the Ellipse, and the rest of her hirsute ensemble followed suit, with the caterwauling de-emphasized by a twin-guitar retreat processed through enough stomp boxes to crash a space shuttle. The effect of the tunes from this new release ("JD," "Every Man," "Walking Clouds," "Night of Frogs," and others, but don't ask me when they played which, as these chunks of music are more/less than interchangeable) was that of Jethro Tull for underachievers. Unipolar ennui. Over and over and fucking over. This analogy held up until the moment in the show when Sollenberger put down the woodwind and - slow as you can say "My Muddy Valentine" - picked up a fiddle, summoning not only a cornball joke but also a quantum mechanics paradox and a fun fact.
First the knee-slapper. Music Lover to Sollenberger: "What did you do with the money your parents gave you?" Sollenberger: "What money?" Music Lover: "The money they gave you for violin lessons." (Bud-duh-bump kkkssshh!)
Now the fun fact and the theoretical physics bit: Catgut, the material that makes up violin strings (apocryphally, natch, as it really is used in tennis rackets and for some surgical sutures), is actually twined out of sheep intestines. With that being said, the torturous bowing and general wailing by Bardo Pond summoned the celebrated thought experiment of Schroedinger's cat, the mythical half-dead, half-alive kitty trapped in a box of Quantum Uncertainty, only at the Derby it was as if Bardo Pond stepped on the famous feline's tail, then cut up its tummy and strung up Sollenberger's violin.
Sollenberger's car, Sollenberger's cat, Schroedinger's cat. However you slice it, the salient point is that Bardo Pond's retro-hippie Plan 9 from Inner Space cosmo rock should have dirt-napped permanent-like in the 1970s with the likes of Jobriath or Lothar & the Hand People, and yet it has somehow managed to remain undead, yet un-alive.
But it didn't die, and on Sunday night Bardo Pond's stuck-in-second-gear set did cough up one Cosmic Epiphany like so many hairballs. Boredom travels in one direction, baby: reverse. Likewise, Life also goes in one direction: forward. And with that calculus, it is too precious to sit through this shit.
Published: 07/24/2003
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