Posted on: September 20, 2013 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

With a reputation for frenetic live performances and penchant for well crafted, unconventional indie rock, Ravenna Woods provide a crucial reminder to Seattle, WA’s music scene that, as Spin put it when describing the band, “Just because it’s acoustic, doesn’t mean it must be pastoral and warm.” The band is pleased to announce that they will release The Jackals on 11.12.13 via RavWoo Records. The Stranger has just premiered The Jackals standout track “Live Alone”, which can now be heard right here:

 

 

http://lineout.thestranger.com/lineout/archives/2013/09/19/premiere-listen-to-this-eerie-great-new-ravenna-woods-song-live-alone

 

 

Ravenna Woods has quickly become a favorite among Seattle concert-goers and music cognoscenti alike. Their 2010 full length Demons and Lakes and subsequent follow up EP Valley of the Headless Men earned them top album status from Seattle indie radio stalwart KEXP two years in a row and a dedicated following across the Pacific Northwest. Now, after a year and a half of writing and recording new material, Ravenna Woods is ready to begin their next chapter.

 

Expanding on their own distinct brand of darkhorse-acoustic-indie, songs on The Jackals create cavernous, ambient soundscapes that flux with dynamic and heavily percussive pieces ranging from the starkly minimal to the labyrinthine and epic.

 

Lyricist Chris Cunningham gives The Jackals a surreal, urgent purpose, with prominent overarching themes of distrust and paranoia snake throughout the record; shady government agencies, sociopathic predators operating in distant countries, even friends and loved ones ready to rollover on you at the drop of a dime peer around the edge of every chorus. There’s also a recurring sense of letting go that runs throughout The Jackals. Not a resigned, morose self-pity, but rather a defiant, Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid –we’re full of holes and bleeding out anyways…might as well go out in a hail of gunfire release.

 

One of the most compelling – if not just plain interesting -records of 2013, The Jackals exists entirely of its own design. 100% produced and recorded by Cunningham and close friend Chris Proff in their century old Seattle home; this is imagination brought to reality without compromise or boundaries.

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