It's amazing, I've listened to it twice... but I'm afraid that my favorite band's latest CD that I waited months for is destined to sit on the shelf because the subject matter smacks me upside the head.

funny. it smacks me upside the head too, but i can't stop listening to it ...

I felt the same way when I first got my copy. I would encourage you to wait a few days and give it another listen. Keep doing this until you desensitize yourself a little bit. I swear, it works.

I'm not even buying it until I'm divorced and my house is sold.

I'm a little too fragile for this one right now.

I can listen to it. I don't relate to the lovey-relational aspect of it, for the most part, but Born is on my list of Libby's Top Ten Favorite Songs of All Time, and Firefly keeps making me cry.

I haven't heard the entire album ...only Born, but I must say it's a very cool song!!!!

Rob

It took me a few listens until I could get into it, but once I did, there was no turning back for me. It is now my favourite album to date along with Good Dog.

Dude, if I was gonna date an album, it would totally be Eve. I mean she's hot, tempestuous, sublime, smacks you on the ass and then pulls you in for a smoky embrace.

But seriously, I love DP, it's just too darn short. I listen to it and everytime I say "that's it?" Take away the cover song, and that 4 minute sax solo and I'm left feeling like I felt that time I went to see American Beauty and the theatre caught on fire and they made us all leave halfway through it!

What does that mean?

The first time I heard it I sat in my car and cried. And then I went and picked up my friend who just got out of a very abusive marriage and she sat in my car and cried. Because of this album my friend refuses to go see the Somerville show with me because she doesn't want to sit and cry in public.

just tell her she won't be the first... or the last to do so...

Yeah, I'm Notorious S.O.B. I know a few others...

I am very happily married, but every great relationship suffers from doubts, and I personally believe times of hardship can temper a marriage like little else can. The dynamic between the two of them and the kind of intimacy I hear in their music is probably the most endearing thing about them, to me. DP is one of my favorite bedtime albums...

My mom, however, has recently been left by her abusive alcoholic husband of 18 years, and the first time she heard OTR was right before he left. Of course she had to walk in the room while "She" from Ohio was playing. She choked up. Then, a few months later, I was playing Films for Radio in the car while we were shopping together and after a few minutes she quietly asked me to turn it off. She says the voice is TOO real, too raw, and the lyrics make her wistful in an almost angry way, like they are flaunting something that they have that she has never and will never experience.

I can understand what she's saying, but she was the kind of person a few years ago who would put on early Pearl Jam or Pink Floyd when she was in a bad mood, so I guess this has to be a pretty intense thing for her to react to it like that. She didn't even want to hear Drunkard's Prayer after Tim and I came back from the concert and were gushing about it. So I try to be understanding... But the reason I love their music- it's so honest it cuts you and kisses you better at the same time- is the very reason she tells me she can't handle it.

[edited for spelling errors]

I truly love this album. I believe it is my favorite album right now.
I somehow do not feel sadness when I hear the songs.
(With the exception of 'Little Did I Know' and 'Who Will Guard the Door')
I think that the songs are hopeful and strong.

On the other hand, when I am feeling sad, ( this may sound unusual to Gwinifer's mom ) I LIKE to immerse myself in sad songs. I like to feel the pain as intense as I can, to get through it.
Somehow the beautiful songs on Drunkard's Prayer are not this sort of song to me.
Examples of sad OTR songs for me are:

Latter Days (OK, it's corny but still my all time favorite OTR song and chokes me up)
I Will Remember
When I Go
And Can it Be
Anyway
It's Never Quite What it Seems
What I'll Rember Most
Rhapsody
Like a Radio

trudes, you mentioned *rhapsodie*

*sigh*

i was planning on singing *rhapsodie* at my first planned wedding reception (yep, engaged twice here, never married, probably neither really my fault...), and after we broke up, i couldn't listen to it.

i loved that song, but i just couldn't hear it without bawling.

then when _what it takes to please you_, the tribute album, came out, i listened to *rhapsodie* sung by someone else, and the words, "if you should ever leave, then i will love you for what you need..."

talk about clarity.

*sigh*

mmmm... me, too, at least for a little while. it nurses me back. but then the pain continues, but in a more manageable fashion, and i can't handle the sadness of the sad songs.



what do you find corny about it? i love it completely ...

Kelly,
I love the song completely and it's not corny at all.
The corny part is my loyalty to this old standard OTR song.
I think they play it more than any other song in their repertoire and I never tire of it.

OK, OK
I'm totally hijacking this thread but I wanted to add another sad sad song.
Why stop now?

Helpless.

Karin sings this alone and with Kim Taylor and nails it so much better than Neil Young.
Also Margo Timmins and the Cowboy Junkies.
I get melancholy just thinking about it.

'K, I'm done. Carry on.

Man, I'm with you on this one, trudes. Technical note: as a song or as poetry, Helpless is extremely well-written and is never trite, contains images presented simply that somehow avoid being cliche, and produces such clarity and lucidity that I can't help but be jealous and grateful for Young's writing skills.

That said, this songs speaks to something primitive in me, and I think that is the appeal for a lot of people. The idea of life's simplicity in youth, dramatized against the backdrop of a hometown is, I think, appealing almost at the reptilian-brain level. Since we first took up our few belongings and became nomadic, this kind of wailing nostalgia for what once was has found a way to express itself in art. The modern evolution of it is to be nostalgic about or long for childhood. Even people who have had horrible childhoods might find themselves longing for the simpler perspectives of childhood, the virtual lack of personal accountability, as well as the lack of power in the face of authority. They may not realize, however, this is the driving force behind their nostalgia. There are just a few things that are a universal experience, and this is one of them, I think.

musing,
belly

Almost a year later and I'm at an interesting point in my life to be listening to this album. I'm in love, like madly gladly, off the charts, totally requited, on the same exact page, same exact word kinda dealio. (Word up Fred. I'll never doubt you again. ) I was never really into I Want You to Be My Love, in fact, I'd always skip it. It just seemed too corny and more than a little sentimental, and really, when I objectively evaluate it, using artist's criteria, it still is. But when I evaluate it using lover's criteria, I get it. There is something powerful just in the saying of I want you, not in the sense that you want to seal the deal, bag the game, etc., but in the sense of just not wanting this moment with this person to end, of loving the home one has found in another's heart so much that you just want to stay and exist there together.

And Born, good gosh, that song wrecked my world for almost an entire year, in such a good way, of course. I think in some ways it helped prepare me for this, along with a bunch of other stuff. But a song like that gets in your head and you listen and listen and after a while you maybe do start to believe that you were born to love, without fear, through your tears.

Anyway, those're my thoughts on DP for today.

well, I didn't know if I would ever actually talk about this on the board, but this thread seems fitting.


My mother died this last July, on her 69th birthday. My dad and myself and several siblings stayed with her in the hospital for 2 weeks, watching her go. When we weren't by her side in the hospital room, I would listen to an endless loop of 'Drunkard's Prayer' 'GDBD' and a couple Patty Griffin albums. I can't say that there was anything therapeutic per se in listening to these albums. It was more an obsessive need to feel someone else's pain to help draw out my own. I don't know, that sounds lame. But after she died, with myself and my brother and my dad holding on to her, I listened to "Born" "Poughkeepsie" and Patty Griffin's "Long Ride Home" exclusively for almost a month. No other songs during that period. I kind of hid in those songs. "Long Ride Home" alone received a full week of play by itself around the funeral.

Now that some time has passed, I can listen to those albums in their entirety and not feel (much) of a twinge. They're always going to be linked in my mind to last July, but they sort of just carried some of the pain away rather than soaked it up. I'm one of those people for whom the OTR adage "sad music that makes sad people happy" (or however it goes) is a rock-solid law. I was listening to DP this morning when I woke up stressed about work and bills and the new college semester coming up this week. Didn't take long for me to calm down and focus a bit.

Not sure if this is making much sense. I'll edit later maybe

dp actually revived my love for over the rhine. first listen i loved it! the boys call it my pretty music. my hubbie and i actually dance around the kitchen to it!
it felt like home to me, like gdbd did, when i first heard latter days (my FIRST otr song, and still one of my favorites!)
not that i ever didnt' love their music, it just felt like coming home again, ya know?
plus, i think it deepened my "love affair" with linford and karin, b/c this album dove into their struggle to keep their marriage alive, which is the reality of my life. as much as my hubbie and i love each other, we have to work at it so hard, especially with three kids. it's too, too easy to drift apart in our busy world.
'k enough of my life here. sorry, if i gave tmi, please forgive.

I would love to be Karin and Linford reading this thread..

not at all -- thanks for sharing that.

latter days is also MY otr song and dp has a special place in my heart. as i've posted someplace else on this forum, the cd arrived on a bad day in my life that was saved only by a beautiful full moon. i listened to the cd with a glass of red, the light of candles flickering all around, a clear view of the moon, and dp playing in the background. i guess knowing a little abt the background of the songs (and the life of the muscians) helped me feel a special bond with the cd...a kind of inside bond.

little did i know makes me cry still (as does latter days). there is so much music out in the world but little that makes me stop and really feel something. i like feeling something more -

peace,
zayne

As amazing as the music is, I can't listen to this CD much either--but not for any of the reasons mentioned above. I can't identify with it. I guess it's kind of like that cliche about not wanting artists to be miserable, but really loving their work when they are. This is all rank heresy, I know, but I can't help it: too much optimism completely loses me. But I definitely understand what Anna said--how the meanings changed after her situation changed.

All that subjective stuff said, the quality of the music and lyrics is as wonderful as always and I could not be happier for L&K. (And it was phenomenal to see them at St. Elizabeth's in December.)

Well, I knew something was up with this album when my mom wanted a copy and hasn't removed it from her CD player yet... It haunts her...

"Latter Days" has bumped Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" out of "#1 Best Song of all Time" for me. It's about the total package. There is vivid imagery in the lyrics. The music is - I don't know quite how to say this right - interesting without trying to be clever. But most importantly, the words and the music "sing a duet." They don't merely fit well together, they embrace each other. Linford's stately 4/4 piano chords in the background, Karin emphasizing the sylables that land on the beat, Linford's little "doot-n-doo-da-doo" at the end of some phrases to add a little lightness. It's just perfection, IMHO.

When I first heard "Latter Days", I just assumed it was about lovers saying goodbye, but that didn't seem quite right. The feeling of the song is too majestic, like no, this is not just another love song. It has a feeling like an entire nation mourning the loss of a beloved monarch - "Our king is dead, long live the king." - kind of thing. When I read an inverview with Linford where he described what the song was about, it finally made sense.

Drunkard's Prayer was the first OTR CD I ever heard, and I really had a hard time understanding the lyrics in many places. So I just sort of ignored the lyrics and found that the music, both voice and instrumental, was enchanting. I wondered what Sheryl Crow and Norah Jones ("Lookin' Forward" and "Little Did I Know") were doing on the CD, but hey, if OTR wanted to invite some big-name people to do guest appearances, that's cool.

After finding overtherhine.com and reading some of the interviews, I felt a new respect for the songs, and for Karin's versatility -- that ~wasn't~ Sheryl Crow and Norah Jones! (Who knew?)

Some people, it seems, listen to songs and mostly hear the words. That's just how how their brains are wired. For those folks, I can see how Drunkard's Prayer might be a "downer" or too intense. Maybe they take the words too literally or something. I can't really say, because to me the words just play off the music to create little pictures or feelings in my head. I would have to classify the feeling I get from Drunkard's Prayer as "wistful" or "hopeful" rather than "sad".

P.S. -- For those of you thought, "'Desolation Row'? Are you nuts?" just find a time when you have a half hour to kill and listen to it three times in a row ~with headphones~ at moderate (not loud) volume. If you don't agree that it's an awesome song, then I apologize for wasting a half hour of your time. If you find yourself paying as much attention to the mandolin in your right ear as to the vocals in your left ear, and you notice the little "dance" that they do, then you "get it" and you're very welcome.

Rick.C

I can't fathom NOT being able to listen to Drunkard's Prayer. I definitely believe in the healing powers of art (including music, film, etc.) and I find Drunkard's Prayer, as well as GDBD (there's Latter Days, again), to be a comfort when I'm looking for some. Some other folks whose music I take inspiration from include Van Morrison, U2, Innocence Mission, Coldplay, Jonell Mosser, and Buddy & Julie Miller.

I can definitely see how anyone with marital troubles - current or in the recent past - would find Drunkard's Prayer difficult to listen to (I know whereof I speak). At the same time, I do think there's a healing, hopeful aspect to the songs.

Personally, I find "Suitcase" far, far harder to listen to than anything on DP.

FWIW, the title track and "I Want to Be Your Love" have surpassed "Go Down Easy" on my list of all-time greatest love songs, and that's saying something.