The Stranger, Seattle WA
November 15, 1993

by Danny Housman, Brian Willis, Amie Prentice and Bryan Clark

LIVE PREVIEWS: OVER THE RHINE (opening for Squeeze at the Moore Theater, Weds, 11/17)

Over the Rhine's music is blissfully free of trends, yet the gentle but deep character of Karin Bergquist's voice has a surreptitious immediacy, a disarming intimacy. The band's name comes from the low-rent neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio where the quartet have lived. Self-releasing their first album, Til We Have Faces, in the summer of '91, they soon followed up with Patience, which eventually landed them on IRS Records, who released the LP last June. Opening for Squeeze nationwide, Over the Rhine now find themselves "touring behind" an album recorded over two years ago. Singer Karin Bergquist told me that the band has written at least 20 new songs, and play several at each show. As for the "old" songs, she acknowledges that they are more of a challenge because, she said, "you end up reinventing them, as well as yourself, in some small way every time you perform them."

Over the Rhine's principle songwriter is bassist/keyboardist Linford Detweiler, though their process is becoming more collaborative, and the pair of songs that Bergquist herself wrote evince a promising talent. While the album as a whole breathes with variety--from the soul flavorings of "Circle of Quiet," to the subtle but sexy come-on of "How Does It Feel"--the first two tracks explore a lushly textured landscape that is strikingly dark. "Jacksie" is about the tortured loneliness of a man whose lover has died. Bergquist's gorgeous voice will make your heart ache in compassion for the widower, while the deceptively simple couplets evoke the madness of loss: "They laid her in the ground/She still comes around." Bergquist told me that the song was partly inspired by CS Lewis, who married for the first time very late in life; the loss of his beloved caused the devout author to re-examine his entire faith.

Though Patience will no doubt be added to most "adult alternative" radio stations, the record repays repeated listening in texture and craft; of course, Bergquist's voice is its biggest asset. Even the CD package of Patience, however, indicates that their music springs from a deeper well than most pop product. Woodcuts by Rockwell Kent, an artist and social activist who was blacklisted in the '50s, and moving photographs of a rural Ohio hermit adorn the CD booklet. Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke are sprinkled in the press release. Pretentious, you say? Perhaps, if the music didn't contain the same grain of authenticity as the woodcuts. But instead one has the sense that Over the Rhine want to share with their audience a few of their inspiring secrets. "Maya Angelou is my most recent guru," Bergquist told me speaking of writers. "I'm more into reading her journal and thoughts. Hopefully it will affect my next body of work. Our songs have been very introspective, very human and confessional. She's turned her introspection and philosophy into a real daily experience. She is what she speaks. When I reach the point where she is, I'd like to be that self-actualized." It's the tension between poetic soul-searching and philosophical "patience" that illuminates Over the Rhine.