Pontiak - Sea Voids

Bookended by doom-laced instrumentals that border on boogie, this confusing nine-song album skips impulsively from acoustic ballads and subdued soft rock to space/psych blast-offs. But by including scratchy mistakes and other nuanced minutiae, the trio of three brothers from rural Virginia impress at several points along the way, relying unexpectedly on haunting and lovely vocal harmonization. A spaghetti-Western twang peaks through now and again, cinematic diversions that narrowly avoid a rock retake of Morricone soundtracks yet dislodge a tendency towards sounding like an unplugged variant of Lungfish. Somehow it all starts to settle and make some sense after multiple listens, but the stylistic inconsistencies and overall lack of cohesion ultimately create the feeling of a b-side or unreleased tracks collection from a band who really just need to decide, once and for all, which Neil Young record they like most. Reckon it’s a toss-up between Zuma and Tonight’s The Night. [Eric Ledford]