Make It Real

Album Review

The first album by a reconfigured Pocahaunted, Make It Real solidifies the band's rambling tribal funk improvisations and dubby productions into something far more traditionally band-like. Though the sense of complete unpredictability is removed — steady trap drumming will do that — there is still enough weirdness to keep the group's sound consistently bizarre, despite transforming from the duo of Amanda Brown and Bethany Cosentino to a Brown-led quartet following Cosentino's departure for New York (where she founded Best Coast). With Sun Araw's Cameron Stallones adding organ, songs like "U.F.O." move from loose shuffles into outer space and back. Stallones' presence is particularly felt on "You Do Voo Doo," the organ and drumming giving the tune a strobe-lit psychedelic throb. (And then there's even a guitar solo!) Other tunes are even more melodious, including the vibrant (but no less scattered) "Save Yrself (It's Nice)," which goes over like a sloppy, garage version of tropical-era Animal Collective.