Have The Pocket Gods grown up? Yes, I know, it sounds like a daft question to ask of a band who've been knocking around for a good few years now, but a daft question that their new album - In Search of the Divine - encourages nonetheless, because a band I've loved for so long for their almost innocent, sometimes whimsical indie pop have produced an album that comes across as arch, knowing and - dare I say it - even polished.
It's not that the themes are any different. We still get the much-loved science fiction references permeating many of the titles and lyrics: you may have caught me playing 'JFK UFO' at the end of my April Dandelion Radio show, and that's in familiar company here with 'Bermuda Rectangular' and a new version of 'Someone Else Is On Our Moon', which closes the album as if to provider a reminder that, if what you've just heard has taken us off in enticing new directions, this remains, distinctly, a Pocket Gods record.
Elsewhere, though, there's a considerable broadening of the artistic palette without any compromising of quality. The plaintive 'My Next High' finds Mark Lee in reflective mood and the track opens with an audacious harmonica solo, as if to provide a tongue-in-cheek Dylan-esque nod that, you then think after listening to the song for a few minutes, might not be so tongue-in-cheek after all. As if to play with our preconceptions still further, 'Exorcist 3 Blues' - which, incidentally, you can hear in my May show - comes across all blues-like while occupying more familiar Pocket Gods territory of those murky corners of popular culture inhabited by the movie sequel. And 'Sense' has what sounds like a string section, for God's sake: whether synthesized or not I'm not qualified to detect, but it scarcely matters either way because, whatever it is, it works. As can certainly be said for In Search of the Divine as a whole.
What we have here is a band making a curious move forward, while thankfully not sacrificing any of the elements that made them so great in the first place. Although I've liked everything else they've put out in between, it's no coincidence that this is coming across as the freshest Pocket Gods album since the glorious Lo Fi Sci Fi came out five years ago. If a tendency to dabble with the wistfully ironic and the benignly unthinkable is going to give us results like this, the next five years of this thankfully prolific outfit might prove, remarkably, to be even more thrilling.
Certainly one of the most unexpected releases of the year and, on inspection, one of the most enjoyable too, clues to the identity of This Is Ethmo are abundant enough: their Soundcloud site tells you they're from St Albans and the EP comes out on the Nub Country label, so all arrows are pointing to a side-project of Mark Lee from The Pocket Gods.
And indeed that's what it is, but it's a side-project that, purely by listening to its content, leaves no trace of its origins discernible to even the most ardent of Pocket Gods devotees, a group of which I consider myself very much a member. Completely eschewing the Gods' propensity for finely crafted indie pop, This Is Ethmo instead packs a veritable sonic punch with electronica, beats and, as the name might suggest, samples from all over the place.
I'm not going to play sample detective here, merely to note that a tune like 'The Exorcist' places its purloined refrain against instrumentation that, among other things, throws in snatches of dubstep, a penny whistle (?), some sub-oriental doodles, a brief, deep fuzzy bass and even a folk riff. That a potential musical mess all holds together so brilliantly is down to the artistry of Mr Lee, who clearly has a skill in putting together a patchwork quilt of sounds with a deftness that has, to close listeners, begun to sneak more and more into his work with The Pocket Gods.
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| Beethoven |
I'm opening my April show on Dandelion Radio with 'Feuertrunken', which pieces together something reminiscent of a human beatbox, something else rather more neatly identifiable as a real beatbox, a sparsely deployed African chant and eerie atmospheric electronics before suddenly breaking in with a chorus from, I think, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
But don't get the impression this is all a guess-the-sound, music by numbers exercise, because it's much, much more than that. What impresses most about the project is Lee's sheer audacity in putting together so much sonic debris and expecting the resulting sound collage to work. That it produces results better than we've any right to expect says much about the artistic ear and the absolute love of what he does from a man who's beginning to emerge as remarkable sonic innovator.
There'll be a session from This Is Ethmo coming up in the summer in my Dandelion show. Until then, feast your ears on the offerings on Soundcloud and look out for more from a rich mine of sound that, I suspect, will have plenty more to offer in the near and hopefully long-term future.
Elsewhere, though, there's a considerable broadening of the artistic palette without any compromising of quality. The plaintive 'My Next High' finds Mark Lee in reflective mood and the track opens with an audacious harmonica solo, as if to provide a tongue-in-cheek Dylan-esque nod that, you then think after listening to the song for a few minutes, might not be so tongue-in-cheek after all. As if to play with our preconceptions still further, 'Exorcist 3 Blues' - which, incidentally, you can hear in my May show - comes across all blues-like while occupying more familiar Pocket Gods territory of those murky corners of popular culture inhabited by the movie sequel. And 'Sense' has what sounds like a string section, for God's sake: whether synthesized or not I'm not qualified to detect, but it scarcely matters either way because, whatever it is, it works. As can certainly be said for In Search of the Divine as a whole.
