Biography
The three Carney brothers—Van on lead vocals and guitar, Jennings on bass, organ, and vocals, and Lain on drums and vocals—shaped Pontiak’s neo-psychedelic rock after growing up in Virginia’s Blue Ridge region. Each had previously played in separate groups across the United States and Europe before reuniting in Baltimore in 2005. Once settled, they identified overlapping tastes and began refining a dense style rooted in 1960s psych and acid rock, 1970s prog and proto-metal, and 1990s stoner and indie rock, with Dead Meadow and Black Mountain among the contemporaneous bands sharing similar terrain. Returning to their secluded Virginia hometown, the siblings tracked the White Buffalo EP in 2005 and the Valley of Cats LP in 2006 inside their home studio, issuing both on the family-run Fireproof Records label. National tours soon followed, and nightly onstage improvisations supplied the means to develop, test, and tighten a noticeably heavier collection of new material. That body of work earned them a deal with Thrill Jockey Records, which released the trio’s second album, Sun on Sun, in September 2007. Broad critical praise followed, and Pontiak sustained the momentum by issuing Kale—a split EP of John Cale covers—on the first day of 2008 alongside labelmates Arbouretum, who later toured with the band. A productive 2009 yielded the full-lengths Maker and Sea Voids, after which a steady stream of albums appeared: Living in 2010, Comercrudos in 2011, and Echo Ono in 2012. The Heat Leisure I, II 7" also surfaced that year while the brothers prepared the recordings that became 2014’s Innocence. Between frequent tours, the Carneys opened their own brewery in 2015, thereafter dividing their schedule between beer production and the sessions that produced the expansive, reverb-heavy Dialectic of Ignorance LP in 2017.
Albums
