| Over the Rhine | Everybody Has A Story... | Press Archive index
. . . Dayton Daily News by Dave Larsen OVER THE RHINE Cincinnati's Over the Rhine unearths a garden of delightful new sounds on its second major label release, Eve. The album starts in a familiar mode--with the stark, sweet voice of singer Karin Bergquist, accompanied by the light strum of an acoustic guitar--but suddenly the entire quartet kicks in, lending the lead-off single, "Happy With Myself?," a much fuller sound than anything found on the band's debut, Patience. The track is but a harbinger of melodies to come. Over the Rhine has drawn comparisons to ethereal-sounding acts such as Innocence Mission and 10,000 Maniacs, but the similarities between the tremolo heavy "Conjectures Of A Guilty Bystander" and Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You" comes straight out of left field. "Daddy Untwisted" features a hard, Hendrix-like guitar riff and rap-cadenced vocal, while "My Love is a Fever" delves into Beat-era jazz. Tracks such as "Should", "Within Without" and "Falling (Death of a Tree)" still retain the lush, atmospheric feel and breathy lyrical ambiguity of Patience, but with Eve, Over the Rhine emerges from the musical background with a confident--and harder rocking--exploration of new musical terrain. |