After ten days of sickness I'm back again.
Pontiak from Virginia, U.S.A. is an out of the ordinary Stoner Rock band. Maker has some Psychedelic influences. The vocals sound a bit like Josh Homme. Further I can't compare this album with nothing. Maker is a great Stoner Rock album anyway. I guess you have to judge it for yourself and let me know what you think by giving a comment.
Pontiak exists at a nexus between several musical spheres. It incorporates elements from classic rock and psychedelia into modern drone without owing complete allegiance to any of the three. Upon first listen some of the group’s latest effort, Maker, can sound a little too close for comfort to material by Comets On Fire, Dead Meadow, Crystal Antlers, and Black Mountain – all of them traveling a road well worn by Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, and The Grateful Dead. It’s not that Pontiak has made a bad album by any means, but for a good majority of the crowd to which the band is trafficking in (in other words indie rockers) it’s going to feel just a little too familiar. Pontiak is by no means any more derivative than the other modern bands I’ve mentioned, and Maker shouldn’t be overlooked because of this. The album itself is a far better effort than the most recent releases of all of them.
In many ways Maker succeeds where those other groups have failed – by reigning in some of the endless jamming in favor of more concise riffage and economical songs. Most of the songs on the album clock in easily under five minutes and many far less than that. Only on the title track does Pontiak let loose with roughly fourteen minutes of loose, sun-baked jam and skyward facing drone. At times the album even manages to achieve the always difficult task of trading in ZZ Top style “boogie blues” riffs.
The end result is that Pontiak has made a good but not great album that will most likely be limited to an audience made up of fans of the aforementioned bands. This stuff just isn’t heavy enough to necessarily qualify as metal and not forward thinking enough to appeal to the avant-garde set. Chalk up another entry in the canon of modern classic rock indie bands. Hopefully Pontiak won’t get lost in the shuffle before it becomes truly great.
(By Joe Davenport at Adequacy.net)
Pontiak - Maker (2009)
1 comment:
Glad you got better, thanks for this one.
Post a Comment