Typically when three brothers put their heads together, it turns out pretty well. It may be a little more homespun than usual, that can be a good thing. In the case of Pontiak, a family trio from rural Virginia, their debut album, Valley of Cats, is a tightly-wrapped Southern grindrock package. Half-beats dive easily between each other, exposing a frictionless familiarity that allows them to push rustic rock around the room with ease. The recurring theme in Valley of Cats is a backwood rough-and-tumble approach to Southern Rock. There’s a little bit of drunken lumberjack-style aggression on the album, but for the most part, it has ax-wielding accuracy. "Crows On the Move" and "How Tall Are You?" both feature huge, distorted guitar riffs and big drums that skid around between beats. And, perhaps a nod to Creedence’s "Fortunate Son", the intro of "Ask For Attention" gives way to a swinging blues jam that feels about as Southern as you can get.
Valley of Cats has a few noteworthy, slower, more premeditated moments as well. "They Are Supreme" is an alluring brush-drum ballad with intruiguing acoustic interplay. "TransAtlantic", though heavier, is still a nifty log cabin piano/guitar jam with a slow gallop that an undercover thoroughbred might hustle with. The wiry guitar solo wraps up the package tightly like a long red ribbon. "Hydrogen Fires" begins as a calm, lengthy intro that eventually expands into a simple, yet dark, jam. In all its hard and soft moments, the album stays within a concentrated mood of eye-twitchingly clever rock, and possesses a solid amount of fetching tunes.
Overall, Valley of Cats puts a lot of well-designed effort into the magnitude of each of its distorted songs. Throaty, reaching vocals and drums that can go from gliding to pounding in a second give each track a level of intensity that a lot of alt-country and Southern rock bands can’t. Each track has a lot of momentum to keep pushing the Southern indie scene. Backwoods does not mean backwards.
