Island Diamonds

We Say...

Review by Adam Kearney

The repetitive, ghostly rhythms of Pocahaunted's Island Diamonds inspire awe and reverence. The album laces steady, pulsing chants over looped, tweaked and reverberated drums, fusing elements of dub, trance and drone with traditional Native American song structures. Put it on and you could be spirit-walking in no time.

Though they're probably intended for California desert listening — the duo of Amanda Brown and Bethany Cosentino hails from the West Coast — these songs are equally fitted for walks down fog-laden forest paths, feet padding the Earth in steady rhythm with the wild spirits. With Island Diamonds, any mundane errand becomes a determined trek, a warrior's mission.

The underlying melodic changes are so slow and noise-drenched that they are felt only subconsciously. The sweeping, moaning waves of sound rise and fall, but always leave the pleading drum track, the restless and unending beating of the planet heart. The songs can be hard to distinguish as they all follow the same theme; there's a sense that one does not end and the other begin, but rather that they're all extensions of a single song.

Recorded in one take and then heavily mixed, Pocahaunted use dub techniques to modernize tribal storytelling. Because the vocals are mostly nonverbal, interpretation is up for debate. The relentless pleading chants, nonverbal calls to the gods, could be an aching recognition of the Beyond. Or maybe Amanda and Bethany have unintentionally crafted a morose and powerful chicken salad recipe in ancient Chippewa.