| Over the Rhine | Everybody Has A Story... | Press Archive index
. . . Renegade Newsletter, Grand Rapids MI by Scott Myers OVER THE RHINE In your CD collection, you probably have an album by some obscure artist that you play a lot. You may not know why bought it. Maybe you thought the name was cool. But you like it. You play it all the time. Over the Rhine's Eve is one of those albums. Who are these denizens of the budding music metropolis of Cincinnati? I don't know. But their music is impressive. Lead singer Karin Bergquist has a folky sounding, somewhat raspy voice. She sounds sort of like a drunken, American Annie Lennox. The instrumentation on the album is very traditional rock-n-roll but with unique little touches thrown in throughout - especially in the area of keyboards (provided by Linford Detweiler, who also plays bass and writes most of the lyrics). One song, "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander," might sound an awful lot like Creedence Clearwater Revival, while another, "Melancholy Room," could be a Joni Mitchell song. Lead guitarist Ric Hordinski is a find. He rips through his solos and plays creepy, jangling rhythm riffs throughout. The lyrics are complex and rich in imagery. I found myself playing the album over and over, trying to discover what Over the Rhine was saying - and enjoying the search. |