Pontiak

Wikipedia is sometimes unintentionally funny, especially when it slips just a little bit on the use of that habitual factual tone – take Pontiak‘s entry there, for instance, on the “Genre” section: “Their music is not easily classified,” it starts off tentatively, as a sort of preparation for the incoming deluge, and then the wheels come off completely.

“They have been compared to Harvey Milk, Black Sabbath, and Neil Young. Also, My Morning Jacket, Sleep, Slint, Midlake, Crazy Horse, Mudhoney, and others. And: neo-psychedelic rock, ’60s psych and acid rock, ’70s progressive and proto-metal, and ’90s stoner rock and indie rock.” So, now you know, right? Pontiak sound like ALL THE BANDS THAT EVER EXISTED IN THE WORLD.

Thing is, they’re not completely wrong. These three brothers from Virginia – Jennings, Van and Lain Carney, bassist, guitarist and drummer, respectively, and all of them sing too – really are hard to pigeonhole even during the course of one of their numerous records, let alone looking at their thirteen year career as a whole.

Hints of all those mentioned and many more can be found throughout their records, as they twist and turn, restlessly in and out of focus. Rock is really the only base term you can apply, primal and fiery and quite often fuzzy and psyched out, yes, but from then on, the palette is wide open. Melody is key, but often all those hooks will be punctuated by clouds of hazy guitar sounds. Nothing is as concrete as it might seem, but nothing is as meandering as it might seem either.

Though they’ve spent a few years in Baltimore, their native Virginia is often an important background to the atmosphere of many of their tunes, and sometimes it’s much more than that – like on Heat Leisure, a short film the band released in 2013, in which images of some of the state’s most quietly beautiful farms, many of them sites of civil war battles, were set against the potent energy or their live show.

Their last album Innocence was released in 2014 to overall acclaim, but prolific as they’ve always been, the new one is just around the corner – in fact, the band posted a teasing picture of the test pressings being received just last week on their Facebook.

We’re expecting a lesson in rock to take place at Roadburn 2017 at 013 venue, on Sunday, 23 April in Tilburg, The Netherlands, with the Carney bros as head teachers.

Roadburn Festival 2017 will take place April 20-23 at the 013 venue, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Tickets are now on sale!