Pontiak – Maker – Citizen Dick Album Review

My first experience with a Marshall stack amp involved the hefty task of lugging it up my buddy’s lofted barn steps with my right arm tightly wrapped around a case of Keystone.  Inadvertently, we lost our footing and the amp toppled off the stairs about midway up, nearly crushing my buddy and breaking off part of the bannister.  I wound up with a killer bruise on my left side and my pal hobbled away with a bum ankle as a result.  Only two things made it through unscathed, my buddy’s tank-sized amplifier and my case of rat piss.  I can’t remember how many nights growing up were spent with cheap beer, loud amplifiers and jamming on instruments we weren’t really good enough to use. Frayed and tangled guitar chords peppered the floorboards of our makeshift concert hall.  If I could rummage some old photos of those days, we’d see the late 90’s culture in full array.  Torn denim, flannels, and combat boots, all muddy from trouncing through my buddy’s torn up backyard near the barn.  These are solid memories, and fortunately, iconic images most of our readership should readily identify with. I suppose a man needs to check for his testicles if he can’t identify with the shrieking coolness of do-it-yourself recordings. Inevitably, I envision those high school days whenever I hear a great rocked-out jam record.  Flaws birthed from raw energy raise the hairs on my neck, and the imagery of a group of friends working beat up equipment until sunrise becomes a stark reality when albums like Pontiak’s Maker hit the shelves.

After listening to Pontiak’s third Thrill Jockey release, Maker, for the fourth time through, one thing is abundantly clear; this is not tea sipping music.  The trio of brothers has been busy over the last 365, honing their sound and developing their own pseudo-live recording process.  Lain, Jennings, and Van Carney hail from rural Virginia and all aspects of their musical roots and attachment to simpler things drench this album with personal emotion and raw rock-n-roll fury. Recorded in a 12×12 room with an actual dying amplifier, Maker is exactly what you would have heard in my buddy’s barn loft fifteen years ago, except these guys have loads of talent and know how to harness both their environment and artistic ability into something way more gratifying than high school keggers. Many tracks on the record were recorded in one, live take, and this all inclusive style is kicking me hard where it counts right now.

At its heart, Maker works with some monster guitar work, namely in the vein of mid-70’s Sabbath and Steppenwolf.  “Laywayed” begins the journey with salutatory nods to early hard rock innovators while infusing all sorts of repressed tension in the vocal delivery.  The cool thing here is it pounds my nostalgic nerve, drudging up sounds from my initial fandom of mainstream rock n’ roll.  In the title track, 13:32 of sheer guitar evilness pulses through the speakers with angular shifts and tempo changes galore.

Another great feature of Pontiak’s work here is how rough it is; it’s obvious these guys have chosen to keep things simple, much the way they choose to camp rather than lodge while touring.  The amplification flaws are present, but only add to the flavor, specifically in “Honey” where the central riff comes in with unbelievable levels of distortion and off-kilter, creeped out vocals.  In a side note, since all three are brothers with similar voices, a nearly psycho-hypnotic vocal harmony is chillingly present in most tracks, simply adding to the layer of sludge and hard rock heraldry. “Wax Worship” is a track to listen to with a baseball bat and an enemy in mind, as the macabre oohs and ahhs angrily mesh with the spiraling psycho-digression and tempo changes.

In important nods to their psychedelic predecessors, Pontiak strews the album with some raucously noisy instrumental work.  At these moments in the record, its obvious these guys love what they’re producing, and a wholly emotional tension erupts from the slightly flawed recording sound.  When I say flawed, I use it in the brightest possible terms, as the flaws are merely added for coolness here purposely.  “Blood Pride” gallops back and forth with crazy ass cymbal crashes and hard bluesy axe work, while “Heat Pleasure” digresses into complete chaos before dropping into more accessible ouevres.  Reverbed feedback, fingers sliding on guitar strings, distortion buzz, and all the goodies of early rock n’ roll recordings are present.

When we used to set up shop back in that old barn, we envisioned ourselves to be rock stars.  We all listened to old school Sabbath and tried our best to match up the modern grunge movement with those brooding songs of old.  Make no mistake, Pontiak isn’t trying to recreate the wheel with this record, but the guitar work and echoing drawl of the album as a whole is, at many points, breathtaking.  Be sure to get this on pre-order and enjoy the flashback, dudes.

Pontiak – “Laywayed”

Pre-order Pontiak’s Maker at Insound ASAP