Pocahaunted Interview

Here is an interview I did with the free noise band Pocahaunted.

Pocahaunted

Pocahaunted make scary music. Music that twists and eats at your innermost fears like a plague-ridden maggot burrowing through your queasy unease. It’s all low level drones and voices from beyond the pail that clunk along in a shambolic, rootsified manor that Devandra could only dream of. It somehow sounds like some lost field recording of a bunch of Navajos subconsciously conversing with Anguta while hopped up on Mescal out in the middle of the dessert. They have been hand picked to support Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth and released a bunch of records on labels that you really should be familiar with by now like Not Not Fun and Ecstatic Peace! They currently have a split CDR with Robedoor out on the great UK label Blackest Rainbow. It scares the fuck out of me.

Where is the most haunted place you have ever been?
Bethany: My best friend in high school lived in this house, which my new age mom always suspected was haunted. Once we did this experiment where she left the house for a night with her rocking chair pushed against the wall. My mom said if the chair was in the middle of the room the next day, then we’d know a ghost moved it. Totally in the middle of the room the next day. Fucked up.
Amanda: I’ve never been anywhere haunted, I’m Jewish and we don’t go anywhere or do anything that has anything to do with the supernatural

Ok Amanada, what would you expect to see in a haunted wood that contained your greatest fears were you to find yourself in one theoretically speaking?
Amanda: I’d see Bethany wearing a Lakers jersey and dream catcher earrings. I imagine that she has been in every creepy place that there has ever been. Or I’d see my husband Britt leading a Manson-like cult of beautiful girls in white robes.
Bethany: The woods make my allergies flare up so I’d probably be hopped up on a whole bunch of Clarityin or Piriton if I was there.

How frightening on a scale of one to ten would you grade your music?
Bethany: The most fucked up, haunted sound ever is reverse talking. Thinking about it right now is making me freak out. I think our music is pretty spooky and up there with that sound. It’s like our own language of sisterhood, I can just stare into Amanda’s eyes and hear our music playing.
Amanda: It is more kind of psychedelic and woozy than straight frightening. Bethany’s voice is chamber-style dramatic and when the death metal pedal is on the mood is very heavy. We also insist on playing in 90 degree heat for optimum crazed sweatiness.

What are your favourite Disney movies?
Bethany: The Little Mermaid. That is where I get all my vocal cues. I’m also into Cruella DeVille because she’s wicked bad and my hair used to look like that.
Amanda: I’m more into live action stuff. The Parent Trap and Pollyanna. Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty could be Bethany’s replacement, she’s hot and cruel. I could definitely drone out with anyone from the animated Robin Hood, those dudes are just all soul.