Pontiak - Innocence

Pontiak
Innocence
27 January 2014
Thrill Jockey

3 stars out of 5

 

Pontiak is three brothers (Jennings, Van, and Lain Carney) from the Blue Ridge of Virginia. They’ve so far made an seven-album career of their neo-psychedelic Neutral Milk Hotel meets Black Sabbath tomfoolery. Innocence, their fifth LP with Thrill Jockey (not including the TJ re-issue of Sun on Sun), is a frustrating record, not quite ambitious enough to be interesting and not quite unhinged enough to be fun. There are some good old school headbanging tracks in the first and third quarters, but while these would probably sound great in a bar full of drunk hipsters, there’s just not enough going on here to make the record worth returning to again and again.

The title track introduces the album’s fuzzed-out bass, guitar, and drums attack with an unhinged immediacy. By the third track, “Ghosts,” things have slowed down with each song but have increased in volume and intensity by increments. “It’s the Greatest” brings things down to a crawl as Pontiak concentrate on their more introspective side, throwing a vintage-sounding organ into the mix. By the time track number five comes along, we are greeted with acoustic guitar and vocal harmonies, and the energy has disappeared from the record. In the meantime, in case you were wondering, what we’ve heard so far have been some fairly standard verse-chorus-verse constructions, competently enough constructed and performed, but lacking in anything special to set Pontiak apart from a zillion other bands doing this same thing. Then comes “Surrounded by Diamonds,” a metal tune that Black Sabbath would have been proud to have written in the early 1970s. Though not especially spectacular, it’s got aggressive, meaty riffs and the swagger to back them up. “Beings of the Rarest” is more of the same, and in a good way. “Shining” is the most interesting song on the album, still in Paranoid mode, but with an epileptic drum beat that follows the deranged bass line into some interesting and enjoyable places.

Pontiak is a good band in need of better songwriting. I’m not implying that every remotely indie rock band out there needs to go to Slint-like lengths to turn their compositions inside out; I’m merely suggesting that the brothers Carney push themselves a bit more when they sit down to write. All the ingredients are here for a very exciting band. I’m just waiting for them to excite me.

reviewed by Richard Krueger