| Over the Rhine | Everybody Has A Story... | Press Archive index
. . . The Inlander, Spokane WA by Sander Wolf OVER THE RHINE, Eve Finally allowing itself to get down and dirty on some real songs, Cincinnati's Over the Rhine has begun to shed some of its pretenses. The change has done the band good. Singer Karin Bergquist digs deep to confront and accept her faults on the album opener, "Happy With Myself?" Though the best she comes up with is, "I don't have what it takes/To please you," at least she's trying. Besides, the big fat question mark following the song's title intentionally betrays the fact that she still hasn't figured it all out yet. What she and the rest of the band have figured out is how to confine their odd ideas and organic, retro art-rock sound into something musically and intellectually relevant. Bergquist's coltish pseudo-rap on "Daddy Untwisted" and then later on "Birds" shows an independence and a move away from the haughty syntax that tainted 1993's Patience. The overwhelming winners on Eve, though, are the tracks where the band has come up with some career-saving hooks. Bergquist takes the two word chorus "bone dry" and turns it into the defining lament of "Should". "Sleep Baby Jane" borrows a page from the Cowboy Junkies' book of Canadian folk-pop for a rewarding mid-tempo jaunt. And while Over the Rhine hasn't quite mastered its own style yet, its move towards hooks and lyrical honesty it definitely a leap in the right direction. |