The Indianapolis trio Odawas have never quite been configured like a typical rock band, and as a result it seems it may have taken them some extra time to determine an appropriate course of action. Their ambitious 2005 Jagjaguwar debut The Aether Eater found the group set rather adrift in a vast galaxy of possibilities, patching their frizzled control module with a jerry-rigged combination of campfire folk, interstellar art-rock, and loopy conceptual narratives. Eventful though the journey was, there was little to indicate what Odawas' ultimate destination might be, and certainly nothing to suggest the group to be capable of creating an album as focused and captivating as Raven and the White Night.
As befits a group who also credit their drummer Brad Cash with "engineering and technique," Raven and the White Night is a stunning, balanced work of studio craft and orchestration. The Odawas' sound still travels primarily between the dual poles of singer-guitarist Michael Tapscott and the vintage keyboards and electronics of Isaac Edwards, but here the group's personalities are unified with an uncommon degree of poise and cultivation. The album's warmth and sleepy grace-- which can frequently invoke Grizzly Bear's recent Yellow House, as well as the requisite Neil Young echoes-- also benefit from Tapscott's decision to eliminate (or at least minimize) some of the more excessive lyrical contrivances that often proved so distracting on The Aether Eater.
Which is not to say that the group has entirely lost its taste for extravagant pomp and circumstance. "The Maddening of Raven" opens the album with a portentous flourish of piano, creepshow organ, and tympani that seems conceived somewhere between an Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack and Verdi's Requiem. This indulgent bit of grandeur out of the way, Odawas are then free to immerse themselves into Raven and the White Night's beckoning narcotic currents. On such tracks as "Circus Song" and the majestic "Getting to Another Plane" Tapscott's vocals and guitar are sculpted in reverb and echo, while Edwards displays surprising restraint on the keyboards, his stately contributions casting the songs with a faint but unmistakable air of sorrow and faded opulence.
The album reaches its melodic and emotive apex on the gorgeous single "Alleluia", a cautious hymn whose somber strains of piano and funereal drums serve to escort Tapscott's muted, wordless chorus as it whistles past the graveyard. Despite this brief, hesitant respite, however, the album's prevailing mood is grim and paranoid, borne out in such foreboding tracks as "When God Was a Wicked Kid" or the self-explanatory "Beware", which matches Edwards' swirling, ambient drones and the backing vocals of Liz Janes to its fervent cautions of a faceless dread.
Over the course of Raven and the White Night this hermetic, claustrophobic atmosphere becomes so pervasive that each of Odawas' more alien instrumental departures can seem like a crucial burst of fresh oxygen, such as on the extended electric guitar meltdown of "Barnacles and Rustic Debris" or within the strange marimba tones and field recordings on "Love Is (The Only Weapon With Which I Got to Fight)". On The Aether Eater these unexpected discursions might have seemed just another instance of Odawas trying to establish a distinctive sound through sheer force of will. Here, however, they appear to be simply expressive accents, the natural spoils of a group who is suddenly operating at newfound levels of confidence, cohesion, and off-handed brilliance.
