Jarred Up Festival Warm Up Show with Pom Poko

Pom Poko return with their third album Champion due out 16th August via Bella Union and available to preorder here. Having last month shared the album’s title track “Champion”, and following their recent sold-out UK tour, today Pom Poko share their irresistibly catchy new single, “Growing Story”, from this highly-anticipated LP.

Commenting on the track Pom Poko say: “On this album we wanted to explore simplifying our sound and make some songs a bit more grungy and heavy-hitting. ‘Growing Story’ came out of that process. This song and its title is kind of describing the themes on this record: growing up, whatever that means, and finding yourself in a place where you realise you can contain a lot of different stuff at the same time.”

Pom Poko are growing up. On Champion, a monumental slice of reflective and life-affirming post-punk, vocalist/lyricist Ragnhild Fangel Jamtveit, bassist Jonas Krøvel, guitarist Martin Miguel Almagro Tonne, and drummer Ola Djupvik are the closest they’ve ever been, both personally and in terms of their hermetically tight four-piece rock instrumentation. When most bands call each other “family”, it’s a bit of a cliché—but with Pom Poko, after years of touring the four corners of the world and instituting a stringently democratic songwriting process, they really have evolved into one highly-synchronized unit, whose mission is to stay as true to their artistic values as possible while continuing to explore the farthest reaches of their slightly chaotic, always exhilarating sound.

“It feels like we’re maturing and growing up together,” explains Ragnhild. “By the time this album comes out, we’ll have been a band for eight years. It’s like we’re evolving. When you’re not grinding with the band all the time, you gain an appreciation for what you’ve built. It's like a very weird and really lovely little gang to hang out in. I almost feel like we’re superheroes—it’s like being a part of Powerpuff Girls.”

Champion is Pom Poko’s third LP, after their blistering debut Birthday in 2019, and 2021’s critically acclaimed Cheater. Both albums served to cement the band’s sound: Ragnhild’s high-pitched yet crystal clear voice punctuating the rest of the band’s ferocious onslaught of noise, which fluctuates from post-punk to math-rock and everything in between.

Doors at 7:30pm
Tickets on sale Friday 24th of May at 10am.
14+ (under 18's must be accompanied by an adult)