(Great Speckled Dog)
RECOMMENDED
Probably the best double album of the year. Yeah, including that one.
Once playful, erotic and even slightly jazzy, Over the Rhine have evolved into one of the softest, most polite things I listen to. Even though it means they're unlikely to really blow my mind again, I don't mind the change much; their songcraft is still impeccable, Karen Bergquist's voice is still as hauntingly Linda Thomsponesque as ever, and their albums have ample room to fall into and paint a room with both calmness and yearning. After their last album helped me cope with the death of a family member, I had the chance to interview them, albeit by email, and I'm here to tell you that they don't particularly like being told that their music has come to sound "hushed" -- so let's be clear: it's emotionally intense as always, just very controlled and very wistful and pretty. "Agreeable" doesn't necessarily mean "unoriginal," you know.
Perhaps the best way to define OTR these days is to listen to their cover of the Band's "It Makes No Difference" on this album. That's even though both of them are writing some of their strongest songs these days; the way they turn the Robbie Robertson song around into something so intimate, closed-off yet full of hope, reminds you why less is so often more, in and outside of pop music. Producer Joe Henry, who also handled previous LP The Long Surrender, is a perfect match for the band -- amping up their often minimal arrangements into a swooning, enveloping sound that doesn't resort to sap or adult-contemporary overreach. If more bands learned to strike this balance, there wouldn't be such a stigma around "growing up" in a rock & roll context.
All this time, Bergquist and bandmate-husband Linford Detweiler are in my head, residual from the one conversation we had, telling me to stop making them sound like old fogies who've somehow stayed relevant. They remind me a bit of the couple played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen in Mike Leigh's Another Year -- tweeting about the beautiful, middle-of-nowhere farmhouse they purchased a couple of years ago (which largely inspired the outpouring of creativity on this album) and the lovely nights and fireflies and moonlit tranquil romance of it all, recording songs that make no bones about being taken in by and subservient to this specific beauty and harmony: they come across as a happy brood who simply know how fortunate they are. As stated in the film, they've found some way of leading by example and becoming a glow in a lot of lives.
There are supposedly limits to what we can say about harmony, but OTR's songs are hardly one-note in their attitudes or concerns, and I've never truly believed that was the case anyway. Meet Me is divided in half but the songs blend seamlessly together as a singular, moving experience. Berguist's vocals stick to a stirring low register until she very pointedly bursts out into oblivion on track number four, "I'd Want You." The songs are built around the joy of the performance more than hooks, but they are nevertheless superbly crafted and memorable; the first disc closes with an emotional climax of sorts in Berquist's "Wait," but from there the album hardly meanders.
It's so damn consistent, as this band always is, that one could get too lost to even notice how different the songs are, especially when the record is sequenced so well. Lay the lilting, solid-as-a-rock ballad "Baby If This Is Nowhere" and the impulsively romantic "All Over Ohio" together and in a certain guise they'd sound like a different mood on a different day, but Meet Me as a whole strikes such an unerring chord that the progression is natural.
And you could easily object to the sentimentality in Detweiler's lyrics on the latter cut, but you'd be missing strong evidence that he is proving himself (along with his wife) one of the best living composers of true Americana -- the fact that it's often unclear whether he is singing about love of a human or of his home, and the metaphorical power of that confusion, is a suggestive and provocative enough element to exemplify how well Over the Rhine continue to make music that feels effortlessly comfortable and yet challenges and pushes artistically. You can't buy emotions, but this is the next best thing.
[SEE ALSO:]
The Long Surrender (2011)
No comments:
Post a Comment