https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYyeFEW7HR0
Hard to categorize OTR but I often hear echoes of their love for Tom Waits in their back beat and sentiments. OHIO defies anything I've heard by them or any band. A double album of ambition and subtlety. -lk
Over the Rhine (OTR)
OHIO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIcuS4YyBxQ
AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
It's mystifying that the recordings that give listeners all the trouble are the albums that offer a lasting impact. Over the Rhine's Ohio is just such an album. It is a sprawling, two-disc sermon on want, need, recalcitrance, and traditional American spiritual matters viewed in an untraditional manner. Produced by OTR and Mahan Kalpa, it is full of contradiction and represents two different sides of the band's sound. Disc one is almost completely devoid of rhythm and has nothing whatsoever to do with rock & roll; its dynamic is fragmented to the point of being absent in places, and its pace is like that of a slow, controlled, forest burn. Disc two is rhythmically more varied and projects the questions on disc one more forcefully. Emotion, physical desire, and spiritual catharsis are not so artfully stated, making them come to the listener more immediately; and ultimately, there is some haunted spirit of rock & roll present in its tracks. As an album, Ohio, with its sense of tight tracking and meticulous overdubbing, carefully positioned silences, lyrical artifice, and an insistence on absolute control, seemingly turns back on itself and stands in opposition to the rest of the band's catalog, and in places, stands against itself. Because of its utter lack of playfulness and self-conscious seriousness, it seems to move against the grain that rock & roll by its inherent nature, revels in. However, none of this is to be discounted. There is great value in the aesthetic view that Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist hold in their collective, velvet-gloved fists. When feeling a record on a gut level as deeply as Ohio demands, it becomes imperative for the listener to observe not only the narrative journeys in the songs themselves, but the one going on in the mirror as well. Ohio is full of OTR's trademark struggle with the fractured beauty, the brokenness, the sacred, the lure to redeem the sensual and the sexual from the tawdriness of popular culture, the revelation in everyday life, the nagging, seemingly eternal doubt that has been discarded as profane or blasphemous by those wishing to discount the human condition, and so forth. In other words, these transcendent themes are also central to the evolution of not only rock & roll, but popular music across the board.
On disc one, songs such as the opener, "B.F.D.," and "What I'll Remember Most," with whinnying pedal steel guitars (courtesy of under-recognized guitarist Tony Paoletta), brushed drums, and acoustic six strings, become accoutrements for Bergquist to explore the deep, hers, Detweiler's, and yours as you twist uncomfortably in the jagged ellipses at the end of her lines. The more itchy the lyrics get, the more pronounced the artifice becomes -- "Jesus in New Orleans," a song that is unbelievable in its haggard gospel setting, becomes shiny new because of that uptight framework. Disc two comes from the heart of the process, immediately in the moment. In the songs that reference something outside the first person, such as "She," "Another Number One," "How Long Have You Been Stoned," and so forth, the power of observation becomes the articulation of archetype and metaphor. It is as if these songs all echo and underscore Bergquist's vocal ache that is as timeworn as it is brazenly insistent: "I wanna do better/I wanna try harder/I wanna believe down to the letter...." As the pedal steel whines into the center of the tune's spine, backed by a lilting piano and a faltering rhythm track, Bergquist's voice embodies the entire struggle; she's pointing the mirror into the face of the listener who "needs the grace to find what can't be found." That pop music can do such a thing is a wonder. That it can cause such visceral reactions, both attractive and repellent, is remarkable; that a band can focus so single-pointedly is a miracle. Ultimately, OTR's Ohio is a work of tattered grace, a deeply moving, maddening, and redemptive work of art, and necessary, ambitious pop.
B.P.D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgOimPY3E0s
I'll Remember Most
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIUOYx4MXfE
Album cover for the brilliant "Patience"
One of my all time favorite contemporary folk/rock bands and husband & wife duos.
OVER THE RHINE (OTR)
From tribute to Tom Waits
Don't Wait For Tom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZzpWWs9rpg
Over the Rhine is an American, Ohio-based folk music band, the core of which is the husband-and-wife team of pianist/guitarist/bassist Linford Detweiler and vocalist/guitarist Karin Bergquist. The band began as a quartet with guitarist Ric Hordinski and drummer Brian Kelley. Hordinski left the band in December 1996, and Kelley continued to play into 1997 before departing. The original foursome reunited in December 2008 at The Taft Theatre (in Cincinnati) to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the formation of the band, and again in the summer of 2010 at Ric's studio, "the Monastery", to play the album "Good Dog Bad Dog" live, in its entirety.
The band's namesake and place of origin is the Cincinnati, Ohio neighborhood Over-the-Rhine.[1] Karin attended school in Barnesville, Ohio and graduated from Barnesville High School in 1984.[2] She then went to Malone College, located in Canton, Ohio, where she met Linford. Karin and Linford were married in the fall of 1996 in Cincinnati and several years ago relocated to a pre-Civil War farm outside of town.
Over the Rhine is now primarily Bergquist (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano) and Detweiler (keyboards, electric bass, vocals) accompanied by complementary musicians on albums and tours. Over the years, they have toured and recorded in many variations. They have shared the stage with Bob Dylan, John Prine, Adrian Belew, Squeeze, Ani DiFranco, My Morning Jacket, Hem, and toured as "adjunct" members of Cowboy Junkies.
I Want You To Be My Love...play on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjdoxXP ... NkFlua-1hB
Drunkard's Prayer...great live OTR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjMAIFKE9Jk
"The Laugh Of Recognition" (Taft Theatre 12.18.2010)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-MgpQTvo8Q
Over the Rhine - Let It Fall - Audiotree Live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3OfzB2zi08
