This Got Kinda Long
I have a horrible singing voice. It’s one of life’s great tragedies, really. Surely, someone as completely obsessed with music as I am should at least be able to sing along without upsetting the neighborhood cats. Alas… no. Therefore, I will not be singing the praises of Over the Rhine today, but I will tell you my story of how this one band helped to make me, me.
Before I go any further, please know this about my musical history: My parents raised me on a steady diet of classic rock and a little Motown-The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Chicago, The Beatles, Carol King, James Taylor, Led Zeppelin, Chicago, The Beach Boys, The Temptations, and The Four Tops. My grandparents loved the classics-Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, instrumental big band and standards. What I’m saying is this: Music was a huge part of our household, always.
I was an MTV generation kid from back in the early days when MTV really was music television. Twenty-four hours a day of music, of pop and new wave and rock and rap and metal-every genre just thrown together like a veritable pop culture soup (and we ate it up). My brother and I spent countless hours in front of it, drawn helplessly, happily to its flickering Siren’s call. Oh, we watched it all, from Madonna and Tears for Fears to Van Halen and Metallica to The Beastie Boys and Run DMC.
I went through the same Top Forty Phase that most kids do in late elementary through middle school, playing my Footloose and Top Gun soundtracks until they unraveled, singing along with Tiffany and Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson with a hairbrush microphone in my hand. I had the exact George Michael poster on my wall as D.J. Tanner from Full House, and I can still sing every line to Bryan Adams’s “Summer of 69.” I had a pink Swatch phone and an entire section of my closet door decorated with magazine clippings of Keanu Reeves and Christian Slater. I was… well, pretty average for a tween in the late nineteen eighties, young teen in the early nineteen nineties.
And then… and then. When I was about fourteen years old, I became very involved with my church’s youth group. I loved it! Three of my best friends, even to this day, are friends I made in that youth group. The culture there was to listen to contemporary Christian music, and so that’s what I did, too. Before long, I really was only listening to Christian music (and country, because Texas), and I genuinely thought I was happy with that particular life choice. (Oh, self. I can only shake my head at you now.) My parents didn’t get it. My brother just turned up the Megadeath and Pantera.
I would not say that these two or so years were a complete waste of time. When there is only one music magazine for the entire genre, you can read all the articles and learn who’s who pretty easily. I learned how to pay attention to liner notes, to read, to research, to know who is working with the bands and frontmen-that producers and mixers and studio musicians make an album just as much as the actual artist or band does.
Then, something pretty remarkable happened. My awesome youth minister left for another church far away. After a brief stint with some also-great interim ministers, we got a new full-time youth minister. And he was a dick. This did not fit into my previously constructed Christians-Are-Always-Good-People paradigm. It opened my eyes to the really very human and flawed world that that I thought didn’t apply to the little Christian bubble in which I’d enclosed myself. Sometimes, people are assholes. And, somehow, with eyes open, I opened my ears, too, and I made a horrible and wonderful discovery: That this music that I’d devoted so much of my time and energy to knowing was, for the most part, total crap-uninspired, trite lyrics, cheesy instrumentation, cheap artwork, self-righteous drivel (with a few exceptions, of course-but this post isn’t about the exceptions).
My complete transition back into the world of actual music happened early in my junior year of high school, and really-it was a result of my own mini-rebellion (and you are fixin’ to see how a not-naturally-rebellious goody-goody rebels: like a dork). I really disliked the new youth minister; I hated how he treated people, I hated how he viewed scripture, and I hated, completely resented, that he made me uncomfortable in this place where I’d always felt so at home and connected to God and to the people around me. So naturally, rather than attending the Sunday School he led, my friends and I held our own alternative Sunday School in the parking lot outside. We did not show up early to week-night bible study any more. Instead, we hung out in the car, drove around listening to music, making Monty Python and Princess Bride jokes.
Of all the new music we blared from the car speakers, the band that made the biggest difference in my life was Over the Rhine-an obscure indie band from Ohio. At the time, in the early/mid nineties, they had this coffee/art house sultry acoustic thing happening-it was like nothing I’d ever really heard before. There was just something about the beauty of their imagery and word play, the skeptical nature of their tone, yet a still-earnest spirituality of it all. Over the Rhine was (is) People Music. Human. Real. Beautiful. Aching. Bitter. Loving. Artful. Hopeful. It wasn’t the one-dimensional tripe that the contemporary Christian music was; it was art, and I was moved.
Over the Rhine has never left me-they continue to make some of the best, most honest, most beautiful music I am privileged enough to hear. They have not stayed the stylistically the same after all these years. They’ve got their fingerprints covering beautiful acoustic music that is always fundamentally them, that sometimes leans jazzy, sometimes Americana, always growing. But, they’ve grown organically, matured (the same way crows-feet make smiles brighter, eyes bluer). Karin Bergquist continues to be the meter-stick in my head by which all coolness is measured (there really is no higher compliment than Karin-Berquist-Cool). Her voice is absolutely stunning-airy when it needs to fly, sharp when it needs you to bleed, gravel when it needs you grounded.
The thing about Over the Rhine is this: They changed my life. They changed me. They made me look at music and poetry and art and spirituality in a way that I never would have done without them. Without them, I might still be lost in a world where music serves only the bland purpose of platitude, of being so self-righteous we can’t even be bothered to notice the world around us. Over the Rhine helped me understand that there is real, deep beauty in honesty and in craft and in more than a little bit of cleverness.
Before you get started: Over the Rhine is an American, Ohio-based band, the core of which is the husband-and-wife team of pianist/guitarist/bassist Linford Detweiler and vocalist/guitarist Karin Bergquist (first sentence totally ripped from Wikipedia because it was easier to c/p than to keep going back to check spellings). Like Mumford & Sons, they sometimes write about the Christian faith (or, really-faith in general) from the creative perspective of thoughtful Christians. Their earlier stuff is a bit more faith-focused than their albums from Ohio forward. In every album, some songs deal with faith, some don’t, but there is a, sort of, faith-filter that the narrator often struggles through in a very raw and real and often heartbreaking way. In the earlier albums, Linford wrote most of the lyrics, but Karin started writing more as the albums progress. Dynamic Duo, indeed-they are amazing.
Okay, so the playlist: I never know how the order ends up once the playlist is all zipped and interneted, so this is the order I put these songs in. If you want them in a different order, then by all means… go for it. The list is mostly in chronological order by album, with one large exception that I’ll explain in the notes. I like that you can sort of track their growth in the slight changes over the years. It’s almost shocking to listen to songs from ‘Til We Have Faces and then from The Long Surrender, but when you hear how their stylistic story plays out in order, it makes a lot of sense. I don’t have a song from every album on here, mostly because there were a couple of albums that I just didn’t like that much. I’m not as familiar with The Long Surrender as I am with, Eve, Good Dog Bad Dog, Ohio, and ‘Til We Have Faces, which are just some of the most perfect collections of music ever ever ever. I have listened those albums raw. I know them like old friends. At any rate-I do hope you give this a listen (and then support this little indie band by buying their records and seeing their concerts).
Playlist Order:
1. Cast Me Away - ‘Til We Have Faces
2. And Can It Be - ‘Til We Have Faces
These songs belong together. They are the first two Over the Rhine songs I ever heard, and “Cast Me Away” is like a prologue to “And Can It Be.” The early nineties sound is apparent here (1991), and for that reason, I’m not putting a whole lot from that album on this playlist (though it is a beautiful album). I love this album, but to me, I think, even though it is gorgeous and lyrical and everything I love about OtR, the sound is a little dated. If you find that you really like Over the Rhine, it would be worth listening to more from this record. I particularly love "Sea and Sky," "Gentle Wounds," "Eyes Wide Open," "Like a Radio," "Paul and Virginia," and "The Genius of Water."
3. Happy With Myself? - Eve
Oh, this song. It’s so angry and cynical and snarky, and so, so ambiguous. I get the feeling that God is one of the participants in this one-sided conversation, but man… is he the one scolding or is he the one being scolded? This is another slightly dated album. I love it a lot, and again--if you like it, check out "Within Without," "Should," "Melancholy Room," "Daddy Untwisted," and "June."
4. My Love Is A Fever - Eve
Maybe one of the sexiest songs ever written. Beautiful wordplay. So playful and raw and dirty.
5. Latter Days - Good Dog Bad Dog
Achingly, hauntingly beautiful. GDBD is my favorite OtR album, and this song is the perfect opening number for it. This album is OtR at its best (Though… wait until I get to talking about Ohio later). Throughout the album, you can hear the perfect blend of the acoustic jazzy soulful lilt they had going on in the early days, but you can also start to see glimmers of the Americana direction they’re going to take with their next album.
6. All I Need Is Everything - Good Dog Bad Dog
Lyrics, lyrics, lyrics. The lyrics! A beautiful, harsh, hard look at faith and what it means to have (be afflicted with?) it, its difficulty and its absurdity. I love the narrator’s sort of throwing-up-hands-in-the-air reluctant surrender… the inevitability of it all, at once comforting and creepy.
7. The Seahorse - Good Dog Bad Dog
A song about soulmates. Something about this song’s construction clenches my heart and makes me want to cry. Visceral. Honest. Open. Vulnerable. Think of all the times/you’ve let my lips move, yeah, yeah, yeah
8. Faithfully Dangerous - Good Dog Bad Dog
Masterfully crafted. Another song about the absurdity and difficulty surrounding faith and choice. Sexy and wordy and clever.
9. What I’ll Remember Most - Ohio
So, we’re at Ohio. This is a double album, and to be honest-it is just very hard not to put the whole thing on here for you. The music skews fairly Americana with this album, and it fits like a glove. The whole thing is earthy and homey, sad and very real-also more songwriting by Karin on this one, and you can definitely hear the difference. She’s got such a simple and human quality to her lyrics, where Linford tends to be more cerebral and full. I love them both, but I like that there’s a great mixture of it here. I have some stand-out favorites from this record, but the whole thing works as a unit. Truthful, honest long last look at partnership and life.
10. Cruel And Pretty - Ohio
A song about dying, about leaving, about not really wanting to go-sad and beautiful and so chock-full of imagery it’s almost hard to breathe.
11. Ohio - Ohio
A song about home and the ghosts that haunt it. Nostalgic. Lonely. Regretful. Familiar.
12. Hometown Boy - Ohio
It’s time for a fun one, so I’ve given you one. A happy little love song.
13. Suitcase - Ohio
Breaking up. It sucks.
14. I Want You To Be My Love - Drunkard’s Prayer
A quiet, lovely, little love song.
15. Who Will Guard The Door - Drunkard’s Prayer
I love the guitar in this one. Sad. It’s about loss and regret, and it’s so simple and aching.
16. Oh Yeah By The Way - The Long Surrender
Again-I don’t know this album as well, but this song is bitter. About loving someone a long time and how hard that is.
17. Days Like This - The Long Surrender
Beautiful and straight-forward.
18 and 19. Falling (Death Of A Tree) and Bothered- Eve
Okay, so I’ve put this one at the end for a couple of reasons. One, this song has a “hidden track” on the end (remember those from when CD’s were new technology?), and that’s just annoying in the middle of a playlist. Both of these songs deserve your attention. The other is that I feel like these two songs are an appropriate benediction to this Over the Rhine lovefest.
“Falling” is a happy song about dying (no really). It’s very optimistic.
“Bothered” is another song about faith, and if I could put into words what it feels like to be a Christian… This song does it perfectly. Your fire burns me like a favorite song/a song I should have known all along/I feel you move like smoke in my eyes. I love this version of this song (there’s an updated version on Ohio) because it’s backed simply by an upright bass-it’s all down to Karin’s voice and the way she can tell this secret. It’s so intimate and carries that haunting quality throughout the whole thing to awesome effect.
So, without further ado... the download link is here. It should be good for a week. I'd love to know if you're snagging it, and I'd really love to know your thoughts once you've given it a listen.
Before I go any further, please know this about my musical history: My parents raised me on a steady diet of classic rock and a little Motown-The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Chicago, The Beatles, Carol King, James Taylor, Led Zeppelin, Chicago, The Beach Boys, The Temptations, and The Four Tops. My grandparents loved the classics-Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, instrumental big band and standards. What I’m saying is this: Music was a huge part of our household, always.
I was an MTV generation kid from back in the early days when MTV really was music television. Twenty-four hours a day of music, of pop and new wave and rock and rap and metal-every genre just thrown together like a veritable pop culture soup (and we ate it up). My brother and I spent countless hours in front of it, drawn helplessly, happily to its flickering Siren’s call. Oh, we watched it all, from Madonna and Tears for Fears to Van Halen and Metallica to The Beastie Boys and Run DMC.
I went through the same Top Forty Phase that most kids do in late elementary through middle school, playing my Footloose and Top Gun soundtracks until they unraveled, singing along with Tiffany and Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson with a hairbrush microphone in my hand. I had the exact George Michael poster on my wall as D.J. Tanner from Full House, and I can still sing every line to Bryan Adams’s “Summer of 69.” I had a pink Swatch phone and an entire section of my closet door decorated with magazine clippings of Keanu Reeves and Christian Slater. I was… well, pretty average for a tween in the late nineteen eighties, young teen in the early nineteen nineties.
And then… and then. When I was about fourteen years old, I became very involved with my church’s youth group. I loved it! Three of my best friends, even to this day, are friends I made in that youth group. The culture there was to listen to contemporary Christian music, and so that’s what I did, too. Before long, I really was only listening to Christian music (and country, because Texas), and I genuinely thought I was happy with that particular life choice. (Oh, self. I can only shake my head at you now.) My parents didn’t get it. My brother just turned up the Megadeath and Pantera.
I would not say that these two or so years were a complete waste of time. When there is only one music magazine for the entire genre, you can read all the articles and learn who’s who pretty easily. I learned how to pay attention to liner notes, to read, to research, to know who is working with the bands and frontmen-that producers and mixers and studio musicians make an album just as much as the actual artist or band does.
Then, something pretty remarkable happened. My awesome youth minister left for another church far away. After a brief stint with some also-great interim ministers, we got a new full-time youth minister. And he was a dick. This did not fit into my previously constructed Christians-Are-Always-Good-People paradigm. It opened my eyes to the really very human and flawed world that that I thought didn’t apply to the little Christian bubble in which I’d enclosed myself. Sometimes, people are assholes. And, somehow, with eyes open, I opened my ears, too, and I made a horrible and wonderful discovery: That this music that I’d devoted so much of my time and energy to knowing was, for the most part, total crap-uninspired, trite lyrics, cheesy instrumentation, cheap artwork, self-righteous drivel (with a few exceptions, of course-but this post isn’t about the exceptions).
My complete transition back into the world of actual music happened early in my junior year of high school, and really-it was a result of my own mini-rebellion (and you are fixin’ to see how a not-naturally-rebellious goody-goody rebels: like a dork). I really disliked the new youth minister; I hated how he treated people, I hated how he viewed scripture, and I hated, completely resented, that he made me uncomfortable in this place where I’d always felt so at home and connected to God and to the people around me. So naturally, rather than attending the Sunday School he led, my friends and I held our own alternative Sunday School in the parking lot outside. We did not show up early to week-night bible study any more. Instead, we hung out in the car, drove around listening to music, making Monty Python and Princess Bride jokes.
Of all the new music we blared from the car speakers, the band that made the biggest difference in my life was Over the Rhine-an obscure indie band from Ohio. At the time, in the early/mid nineties, they had this coffee/art house sultry acoustic thing happening-it was like nothing I’d ever really heard before. There was just something about the beauty of their imagery and word play, the skeptical nature of their tone, yet a still-earnest spirituality of it all. Over the Rhine was (is) People Music. Human. Real. Beautiful. Aching. Bitter. Loving. Artful. Hopeful. It wasn’t the one-dimensional tripe that the contemporary Christian music was; it was art, and I was moved.
Over the Rhine has never left me-they continue to make some of the best, most honest, most beautiful music I am privileged enough to hear. They have not stayed the stylistically the same after all these years. They’ve got their fingerprints covering beautiful acoustic music that is always fundamentally them, that sometimes leans jazzy, sometimes Americana, always growing. But, they’ve grown organically, matured (the same way crows-feet make smiles brighter, eyes bluer). Karin Bergquist continues to be the meter-stick in my head by which all coolness is measured (there really is no higher compliment than Karin-Berquist-Cool). Her voice is absolutely stunning-airy when it needs to fly, sharp when it needs you to bleed, gravel when it needs you grounded.
The thing about Over the Rhine is this: They changed my life. They changed me. They made me look at music and poetry and art and spirituality in a way that I never would have done without them. Without them, I might still be lost in a world where music serves only the bland purpose of platitude, of being so self-righteous we can’t even be bothered to notice the world around us. Over the Rhine helped me understand that there is real, deep beauty in honesty and in craft and in more than a little bit of cleverness.
Before you get started: Over the Rhine is an American, Ohio-based band, the core of which is the husband-and-wife team of pianist/guitarist/bassist Linford Detweiler and vocalist/guitarist Karin Bergquist (first sentence totally ripped from Wikipedia because it was easier to c/p than to keep going back to check spellings). Like Mumford & Sons, they sometimes write about the Christian faith (or, really-faith in general) from the creative perspective of thoughtful Christians. Their earlier stuff is a bit more faith-focused than their albums from Ohio forward. In every album, some songs deal with faith, some don’t, but there is a, sort of, faith-filter that the narrator often struggles through in a very raw and real and often heartbreaking way. In the earlier albums, Linford wrote most of the lyrics, but Karin started writing more as the albums progress. Dynamic Duo, indeed-they are amazing.
Okay, so the playlist: I never know how the order ends up once the playlist is all zipped and interneted, so this is the order I put these songs in. If you want them in a different order, then by all means… go for it. The list is mostly in chronological order by album, with one large exception that I’ll explain in the notes. I like that you can sort of track their growth in the slight changes over the years. It’s almost shocking to listen to songs from ‘Til We Have Faces and then from The Long Surrender, but when you hear how their stylistic story plays out in order, it makes a lot of sense. I don’t have a song from every album on here, mostly because there were a couple of albums that I just didn’t like that much. I’m not as familiar with The Long Surrender as I am with, Eve, Good Dog Bad Dog, Ohio, and ‘Til We Have Faces, which are just some of the most perfect collections of music ever ever ever. I have listened those albums raw. I know them like old friends. At any rate-I do hope you give this a listen (and then support this little indie band by buying their records and seeing their concerts).
Playlist Order:
1. Cast Me Away - ‘Til We Have Faces
2. And Can It Be - ‘Til We Have Faces
These songs belong together. They are the first two Over the Rhine songs I ever heard, and “Cast Me Away” is like a prologue to “And Can It Be.” The early nineties sound is apparent here (1991), and for that reason, I’m not putting a whole lot from that album on this playlist (though it is a beautiful album). I love this album, but to me, I think, even though it is gorgeous and lyrical and everything I love about OtR, the sound is a little dated. If you find that you really like Over the Rhine, it would be worth listening to more from this record. I particularly love "Sea and Sky," "Gentle Wounds," "Eyes Wide Open," "Like a Radio," "Paul and Virginia," and "The Genius of Water."
3. Happy With Myself? - Eve
Oh, this song. It’s so angry and cynical and snarky, and so, so ambiguous. I get the feeling that God is one of the participants in this one-sided conversation, but man… is he the one scolding or is he the one being scolded? This is another slightly dated album. I love it a lot, and again--if you like it, check out "Within Without," "Should," "Melancholy Room," "Daddy Untwisted," and "June."
4. My Love Is A Fever - Eve
Maybe one of the sexiest songs ever written. Beautiful wordplay. So playful and raw and dirty.
5. Latter Days - Good Dog Bad Dog
Achingly, hauntingly beautiful. GDBD is my favorite OtR album, and this song is the perfect opening number for it. This album is OtR at its best (Though… wait until I get to talking about Ohio later). Throughout the album, you can hear the perfect blend of the acoustic jazzy soulful lilt they had going on in the early days, but you can also start to see glimmers of the Americana direction they’re going to take with their next album.
6. All I Need Is Everything - Good Dog Bad Dog
Lyrics, lyrics, lyrics. The lyrics! A beautiful, harsh, hard look at faith and what it means to have (be afflicted with?) it, its difficulty and its absurdity. I love the narrator’s sort of throwing-up-hands-in-the-air reluctant surrender… the inevitability of it all, at once comforting and creepy.
7. The Seahorse - Good Dog Bad Dog
A song about soulmates. Something about this song’s construction clenches my heart and makes me want to cry. Visceral. Honest. Open. Vulnerable. Think of all the times/you’ve let my lips move, yeah, yeah, yeah
8. Faithfully Dangerous - Good Dog Bad Dog
Masterfully crafted. Another song about the absurdity and difficulty surrounding faith and choice. Sexy and wordy and clever.
9. What I’ll Remember Most - Ohio
So, we’re at Ohio. This is a double album, and to be honest-it is just very hard not to put the whole thing on here for you. The music skews fairly Americana with this album, and it fits like a glove. The whole thing is earthy and homey, sad and very real-also more songwriting by Karin on this one, and you can definitely hear the difference. She’s got such a simple and human quality to her lyrics, where Linford tends to be more cerebral and full. I love them both, but I like that there’s a great mixture of it here. I have some stand-out favorites from this record, but the whole thing works as a unit. Truthful, honest long last look at partnership and life.
10. Cruel And Pretty - Ohio
A song about dying, about leaving, about not really wanting to go-sad and beautiful and so chock-full of imagery it’s almost hard to breathe.
11. Ohio - Ohio
A song about home and the ghosts that haunt it. Nostalgic. Lonely. Regretful. Familiar.
12. Hometown Boy - Ohio
It’s time for a fun one, so I’ve given you one. A happy little love song.
13. Suitcase - Ohio
Breaking up. It sucks.
14. I Want You To Be My Love - Drunkard’s Prayer
A quiet, lovely, little love song.
15. Who Will Guard The Door - Drunkard’s Prayer
I love the guitar in this one. Sad. It’s about loss and regret, and it’s so simple and aching.
16. Oh Yeah By The Way - The Long Surrender
Again-I don’t know this album as well, but this song is bitter. About loving someone a long time and how hard that is.
17. Days Like This - The Long Surrender
Beautiful and straight-forward.
18 and 19. Falling (Death Of A Tree) and Bothered- Eve
Okay, so I’ve put this one at the end for a couple of reasons. One, this song has a “hidden track” on the end (remember those from when CD’s were new technology?), and that’s just annoying in the middle of a playlist. Both of these songs deserve your attention. The other is that I feel like these two songs are an appropriate benediction to this Over the Rhine lovefest.
“Falling” is a happy song about dying (no really). It’s very optimistic.
“Bothered” is another song about faith, and if I could put into words what it feels like to be a Christian… This song does it perfectly. Your fire burns me like a favorite song/a song I should have known all along/I feel you move like smoke in my eyes. I love this version of this song (there’s an updated version on Ohio) because it’s backed simply by an upright bass-it’s all down to Karin’s voice and the way she can tell this secret. It’s so intimate and carries that haunting quality throughout the whole thing to awesome effect.
So, without further ado... the download link is here. It should be good for a week. I'd love to know if you're snagging it, and I'd really love to know your thoughts once you've given it a listen.