• subscribe
  • Search
  • Odetta Hartman, 'Dreamcatchers'
    Sign Up For Weekly Dispatch
    Get the best of BGS delivered to your inbox.
    We Respect Your Privacy
Roots Culture Redefined

Header Main

Place Ads

Odetta Hartman, ‘Dreamcatchers’

Jan 18, 2017

Odetta Hartman, 'Dreamcatchers'

Clocking in at just under two minutes, Odetta Hartman's "Dreamcatchers" is a quick and grimy little tune that's instantly captivating. The song appears on Hartman's forthcoming 222, a dream-like collection of songs that, while rooted in folk, play with psychedelia and experimental elements to a compelling end. If you're into the sort of stuff that tests and pushes boundaries, this one's for you.

"Dreamcatchers" grew out of Hartman's imagination getting the best of her as a child, when she was haunted by night terrors in her family's basement apartment in New York City's Lower East Side. Those fears subsided when her mother put a small handmade dreamcatcher in the arch of her bedroom's doorway.

"The off-kilter song — which emerged out of the lucky mistakes of a three-finger banjo roll practice session and was produced to sound like a Celtic version of hell — embodies a web of superstition in which to hang those demons and abductors as musical mementos of a time when fear was simple," Hartman explains.

Hartman's haunting lyrics are muddled in with her banjo licks and a throbbing beat that you don't hear much in folk music. Her work here is rich and just the right kind of spooky — let it get under your skin a little bit. 

You can grab 222 — on cassette, even! — October 2 via Northern Spy.

Suggested Reads


Sitewide Footer Banner

Odetta Hartman, 'Dreamcatchers'
Odetta Hartman, 'Dreamcatchers'