Is it six years ago that I first saw Pom Poko? Where did that time go?
I do recall that it was during the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg and that they played a spectacular arena – the Official Fan Club Shop of Hamburg’s ‘other’ football team, Sankt Pauli FC (one that in 2024 is in the Bundesliga while Hamburg FC isn’t!), and whose Millerntor Stadium broods over the festival site.
I thought I might start off this review by revisiting what I said at the time:
“The best way I can describe Pom Poko is to ask you to imagine The Who when they first started out, with Keith Moon behind the kit, but all able to play their instruments to a much higher level. With most of Pom Poko being classically trained at the Trondheim Conservatory they could have gone on to join symphony orchestras. Instead they put together a band which delivers the most dynamic live act I’ve seen in many a year.
Their brand of complex driving rock, heavily influenced by a jazz upbringing and punk tendencies, is like a runaway train, with the singer, the delightfully named Ragnhild Fangel Jamtveit, consistently pogo-ing around the shop then collapsing suddenly as if possessed. Even though their music isn’t really dance-able as such you can’t keep still and even Sankt Pauli fans that had just popped in to buy the latest team shirt were quickly drawn into the mayhem.
At one stage they segued three songs through two improvised jams of the highest technical order. They are all characters but my favourite is the bespectacled drummer, Ola, who looks like the archetypal seven-stone weakling but boy can he find his way around the kit.”
Six years on, has much changed?
This is the second time I’ve seen them this year after a gap of a couple of years. The first time was back in April, prior to the release of their third album, ‘Champion’. I arrived late at Manchester’s Academy 3 and got stuck at the back of a sold out show and missed much of it. The acoustics there are terrible unless you’re much closer to the stage.
This time out, at the Trades Club, an older venue with no airs and graces and which well suits their style, I got stuck at the back again but the acoustics were much better.
‘Champion’ is an album in which their approach was “cleaner and leaner” than before, a little mellower; one in which they ‘found themselves’ and what they mean to each other.
And that closeness was evident on what was, to me, the most meaningful song of the night, ‘My Family’, in which they chronicle the changes they observe in their own little group or family and its touring home on wheels and the joy it brings them.
It’s something they evidently love doing as much as they do writing their songs in which they are subtler observers of life than they are given credit for. They’re in it to have a good time, too, and that attitude shines through every time they perform.
The set was a mash up of the albums to date and the various styles on them. It’s easy to see Pom Poko as a variety of Norwegian musical maestros churning out loud math garage rock just to irritate their tutors but there was almost as much soft rock on display tonight – the album’s titler ‘Champion’ being a prime example, while ‘Cheater’ has the quality of a ballad until its manic outro.
Meanwhile, listen carefully and you’ll hear evidence of rockabilly and even country music on some of the songs.
I have to admit I hadn’t previously fully appreciated the softer vocal tones that Ragnhild can produce until tonight. And she’s become quite the all round front woman, sounding much more confident in her little story telling while she’s developed a menacing stare you wouldn’t care to make eye contact with.
But at the end of the day most folk show up at Pom Poko gigs for their head banging songs like ‘My Blood’, ‘Follow the Light’ ‘Crazy Energy Night’ and ‘If U want me 2 stay’, all of which featured tonight and in which Ragnhild breaks the laws of human physiology, Jonas Krøvel on bass rattles out the notes like a machine gun, Martin Tonne’s guitar chords are so angular you could hang your washing on them, and drummer Ola Djupvik must shed a couple of kilos every night as he metronomically thrashes a very simple kit (in which the ride and crash cymbals are just one) like the Duracell bunny with a battery stuffed in every orifice.
And you can always guarantee a spectacular ending, this time with a transition between ‘Crazy Energy Night’ and ‘If U want me 2 stay’ which, as ever, brought the house down.
(This video isn’t from the Trades Club, but from the Twisterella Festival in Middlesbrough, at which they will also appear this year).
Has my attitude to them changed over time? After watching them at The Castle in Manchester in 2019, I declared them “unique, while the one defining characteristic they have in spades is an effervescence that few other bands possess. That was the most dynamic, intense 60 minutes I’ve ever experienced in a small music venue.”
Then after the Øya Festival in Olso in 2019, “Their set was an absolute delight and the most entertaining of the entire festival by a distance.”
There are many bands that fail to live up consistently to such standards but I see no sign of Pom Poko’s crown slipping anytime soon.
The UK tour continues until 20th October; see details at the top of the page.
I understand they might be back in the UK as early as March 2025. Before then they have the little matter of their first headline US tour.
Find them on:
Website: https://www.pompoko.no/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pompokounofficial
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/pompokotheband
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pompokounofficial/
