Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Pontiak's long drive to nowhere

No one ever talks about desert rock anymore, do they? Maybe they should start again. My review of Pontiak's road-trip-inspired Comecrudos runs today at Dusted.

Pontiak

Comecrudos

Thrill Jockey

Driving long distances can sometimes feel like a metaphor for life itself. Cruising through vast, unchanging landscapes, you can feel that the view hardly shifts at all, that you yourself make little mark on the passing miles which look just the same in the rear view as through the front windshield. And yet, you start here, you end there, and whatever you pass through — mountains, deserts, endless cornfields, commercial strips — becomes a part of your narrative. Long journeys make the passage of time concrete and observable, in a way that nothing else does, except, perhaps for music.

Comecrudos was inspired by a trip from Phoenix to Texas, driving south on Route 385 through mountain ridges and volcanic craters and camping out along the Rio Grande. Although not a long record (its four tracks total about 25 minutes), the EP strives for, and often attains, the sprawling vastness of the landscapes that inspired it. The personal exists, intermittently, in shreds of lyrics about memory, meaning and impermanence, but it is often swallowed up larger scale contemplations.

More

"Part III"

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