Over The Rhine - 'Ohio'

Naturally, I ran out and bought Over The Rhine's 2003 release Ohio, an album that garnered a fair amount of attention at the time. Ohio is as different from their new record as you can imagine. Drunkard's Prayer is a quiet, intimate (and stunning) affair; Ohio is a sprawling double album that finds Over The Rhine referencing all kinds of influences: rock, country, folk, R&B, gospel. The production is still warm and Karin Bergquist's stellar vocals are still the glue that hold everything together, but Ohio shows a willingness to push the envelope that very few artists in this genre dare to attempt.

Take the opening track "B.P.D", for instance. Yeah, it's a freakin' power ballad, and it brings the house down. And it's the FIRST TRACK!! (conventional wisdom would drop this song at the back of the second disc). Everything else should be anticlimactic after that, but OTR settles into a groove that defines the record, an attitude of "yeah, we can do that, too." Dylan, The Band, Carole King, Gram Parsons, Southern Soul, jazz - you can hear it all mixed in there somewhere.

I'm sure to many fans who picked up Ohio in 2003, this year's Drunkard's Prayer might seem like a step back. But truthfully, an already stunning record seems just that much more stunning for the fact that they were able to pull everything back and re-simplify their approach with such wonderful results. Both records stand on their own, and both are equally impressive in vastly different ways (for my money, Drunkard's Prayer has a bit more just flat-out, unadorned beauty than its predecessor). If you're looking for an introduction to Over The Rhine, Ohio should probably be the starting point. But don't let that stop you from getting both records, which showcase two distinct sides of the best band I've stumbled on in quite some time.