Like watching an avalanche crushing a Bavarian cottage or a man being attacked by a lion, listening to Odawas while nestled safely in your phono-womb is an exercise in tuning into sublime frequencies from safe carriage. That huge dial has never made your hands so child-like, that cookie jar so high. Odawas skirt the cliff’s edge like Jack Nietzsche hanging Christmas lights on the shark cage, Neil Young stoking the campfire in his babylon treefort, or a Jandek aria in a black armband march. Odawas’ 2005 debut on Jagjaguwar, The Aether Eater, was a fiery space oddity detailing the brave, the lost, and the maligned. The journey was epic. But the obstinate darkness and disastrous side-effects of space travel are getting lost, and thus turning inward on their follow-up album Raven And The White Night. Odawas’ continual pursuit of this experience leads them again and again to these dark corners where the lines between “the journey” and “the chronicler” can easily be blurred. It is here, in this amorphous abyss that Odawas nestle down and create music that bundles our struggles, rumors, egos, failures, and paranoias. Odawas allows us, the patient learners, to see a parallel universe where fear, apathy and uncertainty can lead to a natural bridge that releases us from our own abyss.This LP package also comes with a gratis compact disc version of the album.
