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Pasadena Weekly
September 2, 1994

by Bill Evans

THEY'RE COMING TO FRUITION

I don't often venture out of the office to interview bands for this column. But then, there aren't a lot of bands that move me like Over the Rhine.

Their first major release, Patience, came out of nowhere last year and hit me like a blast of fresh air in the crypt that is much of pop music. The writing was literate, intelligent and engaging; the performances subdued, consistently fresh and musical; and vocalist Karin Bergquist's work haunted me for weeks. It quickly became one of my favorite records of the year.

So when their latest release Eve, arrived on my desk I plopped it into the CD player with great anticipation. As the first strains of acoustic guitar and Bergquist's voice emerged from the headphones, I contentedly settled in for more of what enchanted me on Patience. My reverie was short-lived however, as the introduction was followed by a barrage of alterno-grunge guitars. "What the hell have they done?" I cried.

"People who have seen us live recently are not that phased," said Bergquist, "But people who only know us from Patience are gonna freak out a bit." She's right, I did. But just as the band has grown in the three years since they recorded Patience, this new collection grows on the listener. I have found myself humming "Happy With Myself?" and "Should" several times over the past few days. Where Patience was soothing, Eve is at times disturbing. Where Patience healed, Eve can feel like an open wound. Even the tunes that feel lighter have a dark undercurrent. Take "Should" -with its pop hook and light feel, you would never guess that it is about a friend who "fell radically in love with someone who was HIV positive." But even with its darker, more confrontational tone, the honesty and genuine emotion of Eve finally hooks the listner.

The tone may have a lot to do with what has been happening around the band in the past year. Bergquist, whose parents divorced when she was young and who was raised by her single mother, was reunited with her father two years ago only to lose him permanently when he died in February. "I've been going through a lot of therapy on stage and in the studio," she said. One of Eve's most engaging tracks, the almost funky "Daddy Untwisted" is directly related. "Ric (Hordinksi, guitarist) had this riff that he used to play during sound checks and I used to turn to him and say 'Please don't forget that.'" That riff became the basis for the song when Bergquist found herself in Hordinski's basement studio trying to flesh it out. "When I write, I tend to start singing random consonants and vowels against a riff or chord progression or rhythm pattern until something emerges. And what came out was 'Are you my daddy.' I came up with the basics and Linford (Detweiler, bass and principal lyricist) came in and very intuitively picked up what I was feeling and finished the lyrics."

If Eve seems a bit conflicted (trust me on this, it does) it may have something to do with how, or rather where, it was recorded and mixed. The recording was done in the pristine environment of a barn at Longview Farm in North Brookfield, Mass. You can almost hear the peaceful surroundings in tracks like "Falling (Death of a Tree)," "Birds" and "June" (which sounds like the guitar parts could have been lifted straight off of Pink Floyd's "Great Gig In The Sky"). More mysterious and menacing tracks like "Within Without" and "My Love Is a Fever" may take their tone from the mixing location--the French Quarter of New Orleans. Bergquist calls it "going from Sunday School straight to the brothel. After being sprinkled with holy water, we definitely got our feet dirty."

The mixing sessions in Daniel Lanois's Kingsway Studio (Eve was recorded and mixed by Lanois protege Trina Shoemaker) was one of the "divine interventions" that have been a part of Over the Rhine since the beginning. Their first self-produced collection, 'Til We Have Faces landed them opening gigs with Bob Dylan. ("I cried the whole night before," recalls Bergquist. "It was a definite reality check." Patience was a collection of demos recorded as part of a publishing deal. When IRS signed the band and decided to release it with just a minor change in the song sequence, the band was bewildered. ("We didn't think it was ready," says Bergquist. "It was like, 'Put that baby back in the oven at 250' for a couple of hours.") It ended up as one of the better albums released last year.

Bergquist attributes the expanded sound and her own more liberated vocal style to growth. "Or maybe it's just a combination of being cooped up with the guys in a van along with a bad case of PMS," she jokes. Turning serious, she says, "Actually, in my everyday life I've really been trying to explore and embrace my own human condition. Sometimes you have to go down into the pits of hell before you get any release." That statement reminds me of why I like Over the Rhine so much. Bergquist, like her music and the band, are ultimately willing to risk everything to go deep.