Bmore Musically Informed : I just picked up a vinyl copy of the record earlier this week, and from the first couple of spins I am already convinced this might be their best yet. From the super heavy low-end, to the haunting psychedelic soundscapes, to the blissful acoustic sonics that bridge it all together… this record is brilliantly dense in all the right ways.

Bull City Records: With this new album, the band is further exploring aural textures and the space that instruments can create while locked tightly together. It’s a local sound that hasn’t quite become recognized as having a locale just yet. The sounds are overgrown and claustrophobic at times, haunting and cavernous in other areas and dark and brooding all the way through. There are elements of approaching, impending, unknown dangers that nervously build and build, only to break and backslide into calm and ease. Pontiak has successfully created modern mountain music.

Under The Radar Magazine 7/10 : “Maybe it’s singer Van Carney’s haunting croon, recalling record-bin ephemera such as England’s High Tide (not to mention a certain Jim Morrison). Maybe it’s the sheer variety of content, as the band drift from groove-driven heaviness on “Young” and “This Is Living,” to such feedback-laden space jams as “And By Night,” or grab the acoustic guitar and organ for some old-fashioned psychedelia on “Beach.” … Pontiak play the craftsmen, eschewing the self-indulgence, paring things down and proving (again) that even a stagnant genre has somewhere to go.”

Prefixmag : Young,” a propulsive rocker that could go head to head with a top Queens of the Stone Age single. “Original Vestal” is a brief, dissonant track that breaks up the riffage of “Young” and leads into “Algiers By Day,” a pleasant but inconsequential mid-tempo tune that is followed with “And By Night,” a superb example of Pontiak’s ability to wrangle feedback into a rock template.

The Power of Pop: the most captivating moments on the record come when the band showcase their spacier side and push the sonic boundaries of their studio and instruments, such as the three-track sequence of Second Sun-Beach-Lemon Lady. At the heart of this record is the tension between pop-structured, dusty chugging riffs and spacier, dreamy exploration, a tension that makes it captivating. This is a record that allows for space to breathe, and what it breathes is fire.

Pitchfork: … Living is cohesive, with the songs fluidly oozing into each other. … The opening track, “Young”, scorches, its swinging crunch exhibiting the imprints of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple without being derivative of either.

Permanent Records: The first track on €œLiving€ sounds like what we’d hoped Pontiak would evolve into since we heard their first record just a couple years ago. The parts / songs are seamlessly interwoven together and the vocalist comes and goes without warning, at times sounding like a less jock-y Josh Homme, or a more foreboding Nick Cave.

ZapTown : Instead of diving into a catatonic state of epic-length exploratory rock songs, Pontiak blooms from the epicormic state of rock and roll by utilizing the timing ideology of the three-minute pop song construction. … “Young” sounds like a warm-up session for Frank Zappa during his Apostrophe days, while “Second Sun” takes notes off of Amon Duul II. Then there is “This Is Living,” which sounds like the band just came off of a daze of listening to Deep Purple’s Machine Head all night.”

Sound Fix Records : It’s not hard to understand how Pontiak has, almost stealthily, become pretty seriously beloved by those in the know: The three Carney  brothers of Virginia have now, with Living, put out five records in two years, the kind of work ethic that makes other musicians hold you in high regard. Oh, and then there’s the music itself: an organic style of rock & roll badassedness that has dirt under its nails and a ciggy dangling from its lips.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 13th, 2010 at 2:16 pm and is filed under News.