Over the Rhine

Item: Ohio
Author: M. Leary

Ohio

(2003)

Reviewed by M. Leary

Discogs Apple Music TIDAL Amazon Music Spotify YouTube Music

Label Virgin RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2003

adult alternative alternative country art rock folk rock

Louis Armstrong once said, "The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago." In other words, good music should have the ability to reproduce experiences for us, to tell us old stories in new ways. If this is true, then Over the Rhine's latest endeavor is a decadent twenty-one-song tribute to what music is all about.

Ohio is immediately familiar, full of warm and comfortable spaces waiting to be occupied. This is not to say that Ohio is in any way a redundant addition to their discography, but rather that we finally have an Over the Rhine album in which all the individually successful elements of the last three or four releases find plenty of room to interact. For many fans, albums like Good Dog Bad Dog played their way into our personal histories, becoming the soundtrack to years of our lives. Films For Radio came along and let Over the Rhine prove its percussively seductive skill in the studio on the Back Porch. Ohio itself places a foot firmly in both worlds. With the subtle "post-nuclear" passion of tracks like "Seahorse" and the fluttering "art-pop" vibe of "Moth," Ohio unfolds across this year's musical landscape like a vintage breath of fresh air.

If one were to think of the ever-revolving lineup of musicians that have lent hand and heart to Over the Rhine over the years as a combination lock, then Ohio seems to open with the bracing click of the right alignment. Ever true to the diversity that makes albums like Good Dog Bad Dog and Films for Radio so eternally listenable, Ohio finds Over the Rhine in three of its major grooves: the art-pop, the contemplative, and the self-confidently soulful.

"Show Me," one of the first few tracks, is a great example of that strange space between folk and art rock that Over the Rhine can occupy with such unparalleled joy. With its slide guitars rolling along beside Detweiler's organs behind Karin in full tilt, "Show Me" rivals "Go Down Easy" in pure passion. "Suitcase" finds us close to the same place, drifting rhythmically back and forth like a tired hammock in the breeze. Just as in the airy "Suitcase," somewhere in many of these tracks are stories that we are peeking over the shoulder of. We are listening in at the ends of private conversations or heartbreaks. It is a few of these stories that take us into the cool midwestern valleys of the album.

And when we dip down from the well-traveled art-pop thoroughfares of both discs, we find tracks like the contemplative "Ohio" and "Changes Come," which may very well be Over the Rhine at its best. Ohio is the inside story of someone who so identifies with a place that he or she can leaf through its geography with the rhythm of memory. Karin takes us quietly back through this history, letting it drape like a mist over Detweiler's lush piano landscape. In "Ohio" itself, Karin and Linford seem to lead us home to the trickling fountainhead of all things "Over the Rhine," a place that their live shows often end up at, but we rarely see on disc. This track and "Changes Come" remind me of Ella Fitzgerald's wry advice: "The only thing better than singing is more singing." And in "Changes Come" we get precisely that, unfolding waves of Bergquist slipping up onto a fragile musical shore of Detweiler's intimate design. It is hard to quantify the experience of this track; I could compare it to the first time I heard Good Dog Bad Dog. But, quite frankly, "Changes Come" hit me much the same way life did that morning when I switched from a Three Stooges episode to the local news just a minute before the second plane disappeared into the World Trade Center. Its eschatological undertones are difficult to shake off.

By now, the circumstances surrounding the almost accidental birth of a two-disc set are well known. And while the second disc doesn't have the major release perfection of the first disc, it certainly has some solid tracks to take us down the homestretch of more than 90 minutes of music. Disc two has something in common with the recent Cutting Room Floor, it feels like an album put together by a band that is a fan of its own music. Bookended by undeniable classics, this disc covers a fairly broad territory and almost seems to be a playful experience of all the influences intimated at on the first disc. Gospel and blues lie down comfortably next to Over the Rhine's own catchy jazz vibes.

"Long Lost Brother" is evidence enough for the blessed necessity of this second disc. It is a startling companion to the dirge sensitivity of "Changes Come," a heartwarming monument to the "second chance." "Nobody Number 1" is a welcome throwback to crowd pleasers like "The Body Is a Stairway Of Skin" or "My Love is a Fever." It is one in which Karin gets to cut loose in an ordered jazzy stumble right into an effortlessly smooth refrain. But of all the standout tracks on the second disc, "Cruel" and "Pretty" may be the most interesting ones in which we see a new sort of Over the Rhine. There is a gentle jauntiness in the way the guitars and piano interact behind Karin's voice that creates a mature and uplifting complex of music. This track seems to hint at a place Over the Rhine may be taking us more often in the future. And then, more towards the end, Ohio's version of the brilliant "Bothered" (originally recorded on Besides)is a thick harmonious treasure for those who haven't had the privilege of hearing this song at live shows so often over the years.

It is often said that music is the space between the notes. Well, for Over the Rhine, Karin Bergquist is that space. Ohio is yet another album in which her voice seeps through the cracks and fills any open spaces it can find to occupy. Under the sensitive ear of this album's producer, Paul Mahern, Over the Rhine has played itself into the difficult corner of coming up with something better next time, a seemingly untroubled situation in the past. One can only hope that the album will find the critical attention it deserves and score for Over the Rhine a broader audience.

This review has already had a lot of jazz quotes, so it may be fitting to finish with one. John Coltrane once said, "Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad." For an album as brilliantly personal as Ohio, I hope for Over the Rhine's sake that Coltrane wasn't right.

4.5 tocks