The Pocket Gods – The Curse Of Oak Island
- Written by Ben Macnair
The Pocket Gods are one of the nearly bands, who do it for the love of music and creativity rather than the fame and fortune, and all of that clichéd type of stuff.
The Curse Of Oak Island is concept album that blends the psychedelic with country, break beats and indie pop, with tight vocal harmonies, instruments that range from banjo and fiddle to theremin, even spoken word segments, voiced by the actor Howard Hughes (not that one). The album is about Oak Island, a Nova Scotian island, which is said to be variously the home of the Ark of the Covenant.
Stylistic touchstones are The Byrds, with ‘Ten X’ and ‘The New Atlantis’ betraying their influence particularly strongly, whilst the urgency of Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham is heard in the brooding, curse laden ‘Seven Must Die’. ‘Cygnus’ has the air of a short TV advert, but ‘Black Friday 13th’ sounds like a lost Beatles track, with stacked harmonies, theremin, and an ever-shifting time signature hiding behind one of those irritating earworms that gets into your head and refuses to leave.
There is a lot of genre hopping here, from singer-songwriter Mark Christopher Lee and his floating musical cohorts from science fiction sounds, to the most rustic of folk songs. The Pocket Gods, who have been around since 1998, and have released 67 albums, and 23 EPs, were championed by the late John Peel, and are regularly featured on BBC Radio 6, where their love of song-craft and weirdness seems to have found kindred spirits.
In taking on a concept album, they will raise awareness of one of the great mysteries in Canadian history, and this fine album is something new and distinctive for their many followers. The fact that The Curse Of Oak Island is unlikely to trouble the Top 10 is more of an indictment of the narrow-mindedness of radio stations and record companies than it is to do with the value of this entertaining, ambitious and sonically slightly weird album. It is not for everyone, and it is to an acquired taste, but if you have the time and the patience, it will reward repeated listening.
The Curse Of Oak Island is available from Amazon and iTunes.