Pocahaunted

Founded as a willfully nanve improv duo in 2006 by Amanda Brown and Bethany Cosentino and issuing nearly 25 releases in their first three years of existence, Pocahaunted built a sound from shambolic drifts, drifting half-remembered funk grooves, and liberal use of dub-like reverb. Founded in Los Angeles after Brown had a dream that she and Cosentino started a band called Pocahaunted, the duo was near the center of the West Coast psychedelic scene, in large part because of its affiliation with Brown's Not Not Fun Records, founded a year before Pocahaunted.

Though ultimately woozy and slathered in echo, rhythm was an important part of the duo's earliest releases. Improvising around concepts and pre-chosen titles, Brown and Cosentino moved between "Pocahaunted does Tom Tom Club" (2008's Chains) to "dark raga" (2009's Passage) and "tribal soul" (2008's Mirror Mics). There was also a steady stream of cassette-only ephemera, including 2006's What the Spirit Tells Me and 2009's Gold Miner's Daughter. Associated with the Wire magazine-dubbed "hypnogagic pop" of Emeralds, Ducktails, and Sun Araw -- many of whom released discs on Not Not Fun -- Pocahaunted's half-songs and drone-happy ethos fit in perfectly.

In 2010, Cosentino left the band to attend college in New York (where she founded Best Coast). Brown returned with a reconfigured Pocahaunted quartet, including husband Britt Brown on guitar. The new Pocahaunted continued on logically from the duo improvisations, using much of the same vocabulary, but solidifying it into more proper songs, with sections, audible lyrics, and even refrains. ~ Jesse Jarnow, Rovi...

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