Love & Revelation

Description

Love & Revelation is the 14th studio album by the American folk/americana duo Over the Rhine (husband-and-wife Linford Detweiler and Karin Berquist), independently released on the band’s own label Great Speckled Dog in March 2019 (though shipped to backers in January).

About two years ago I paid up front for three new albums from Over the Rhine, and the first of them, called Love and Revelation, was sent to backers this week. It’s not officially out until March, and I have to admit I still get a thrill from listening to music before its release date, even if the band sends it to me and dozens of others at the same time.

Ordinarily, of course, I would wait until that release date to write about a record like this, one that I sincerely hope everyone reading this will check out. But you can pre-order the album now, and I hope by the time I am done jabbering about it, you will. I’ve been an Over the Rhine fan for 15 years now, having jumped aboard with their extraordinary double album Ohio, and I’ve seen them live half a dozen times. They retain their power to move me like few other artists can, and they do it again on this new album.

Over the Rhine is a husband-and-wife duo. The husband, Linford Detwiler, is the piano player, and he sings occasionally, his rough, low tones adding a touch of earth to the angelic tones of his wife, Karin Bergquist. Karin is, without a doubt, one of my four or five favorite singers alive. Patsy Cline is the closest approximate, but Bergquist is her own thing, her voice containing such depth of feeling and history, drawing from tradition while singing from an overflowing heart. I can’t do it justice in words, but her voice stirs something inside of me, something that only stirs at the most powerful of musical expressions.

On Love and Revelation, she uses that voice to sing about the hardship of life, about the pain of leaving good things behind, about the healing balm of music and about the all-reaching love of God. This is one of those albums that sounds stripped-back (and at times it is), but when you really listen you can hear so many elements working in concert, creating an atmosphere of quiet beauty. There are strings all over this record, but they’re so subtle that you may not notice them right away. Everything here, from the tender acoustic guitars to the generous peals of pedal steel to the always perfectly restrained drumming of Jay Bellerose, is in service to these songs, and to Karin Bergquist’s glorious voice.

There’s a lot here that could be called traditional folk music, from the sad opener «Los Lunas» to the sweeping «Broken Angels», and once again Over the Rhine has created an album of songs that could be brand new or could be a hundred years old. Along the way, they’ve written some of my favorite things in their catalog. The melancholy «Given Road» cracks me open, the strings dancing slowly with Greg Liesz’s wonderful, weeping pedal steel. “I miss what I’m forgetting, I try not to but I’m letting go of any shred of anything that held you here,” Bergquist sings before launching into a wordless refrain that sends shivers.

«Let You Down» is a song of devotion, and the band’s slide guitarist, Brad Meinerding, sings lead with Bergquist complementing his high tenor perfectly. It’s a gorgeous string-accented weeper. And Detwiler joins his wife on lead vocals on the lovely «Betting on the Muse», a song about their musical relationship – for years, Detwiler kept silent and in the background, and I wish he’d started singing with the band earlier. It’s just Bergquist, a guitar and a drum set on the shuffling title track, but it’s marvelous, a call for more understanding and more love in the face of a populace armed to the teeth.

But they save my favorite for the end. «May God Love You (Like You’ve Never Been Loved)» is, bar none, one of the prettiest songs this band has ever given us. It’s about our need for wholeness, our deep desire for something greater than ourselves to pull us through. “There are no wise men traveling, there is no gift to bring, but if you welcome home a child you’ve thrown your hat into the ring, we’re not curable but we’re treatable and that’s why I still sing, may God love you like you’ve never been loved…” It’s a song that dives to the lowest depths this album plumbs and then looks up, crying out, certain of the direction from which grace will come.

I will never, ever tire of songs that that one, or albums like this one. Bergquist and Detwiler pack so much feeling, so much agony and hope, into the 41 minutes of Love and Revelation that it’s a wonder that it sounds so effortless. This is the 14th Over the Rhine album, and by now they have their sound down to a science. But it’s still the most deeply emotional stuff, and it still draws me into another place, and I’m still incredibly grateful for it. In a couple months, when you get to hear this album too, I hope it will do for you what it does for me. [Andre Salles, Tuesday Morning 3 a.m., January 29, 2019]

It says something about the strength of a song, when you hear it once live and recognise it immediately on hearing the studio version – which points straight away to several strong songs on this album.

It has been four years since their last release and the time has clearly been spent in polishing these works to a gleam, such is the natural fit of words and music, and the artistry of the lyrics: “In the crawlspace under heaven, in the landscape of a wounded heart, I don’t know where to start” and “We’re not curable, but we’re treatable” are just two striking lines of many.

While Detweiler is playing more piano than on Edge of the World, it isn’t always up front, but when it gets space around it to shine (the wonderful «Broken Angels») it transports you straight to the centre of the duo’s emotional heart. I could hear him play for hours on end, but it would probably leave me either a sobbing wreck by the end or in a place of ecstatic peace.

But it’s not just him. At times, the chord sequences are clearly very common, but still the song’s heart shines through, such as on «Los Lunas», where the pedal steel takes things to a sublime level.

That track is a good example of Bergquist’s way of inhabiting songs so naturally that, even if she is voicing other people’s situations, they come straight from the heart. There is something vulnerably tremulous about her singing, vocally strong, but emotionally fragile – and everyone around her plays in sympathy. It all feels like she has summoned you into a private corner and started confiding just in you.

There is a lot of sadness in these songs (they have come to that stage of life where people die – and not always the old ones and not always naturally). Bergquist tends to write these and Detweiler’s songs seem to have a bit more hope threaded through.

As always, they mix the spiritual and the sensual, all reflecting back their recent experience. Sometimes the songs are deeply personal:

“I’m remembering your kisses, our lips raw with love.
But the fact that you still make me laugh is what I’m most proud of,”

At other times a wider observation breaks through:

“Stop confiscating Jesus,
Jesus, who believes this?
They‘d arm him to the teeth,
but that’s not my belief
I believe in love & revelation.”

This is as pure an OtR sound as they have delivered. As well as the piano, back are the exquisite decorative touches once given by Ric Hordinski’s guitar, but now from Brad Meinerding’s. Aiding him are streams of pedal steel and occasional strings. Setting it all off are some rich subterranean bass notes.

There is so much more to enjoy on this release, such as the intimate harmonies on «Let You Down»; the shuffling rhythm of the story song «Leavin’ Days»; the way that «Rocking Chair» sounds at first like an off-the-cuff song, but really catches the tension between relaxing at home and needing to get on the road; and the bonus of an instrumental at the end. Then just as it opens with an OtR classic-to-be, the last full song «May God Love You (Like You’ve Never Been Loved)» seems destined to be a set-closer for years to come.

Over the Rhine retain passionate followers and seem to find it easy to pick up new ones. This collection will only help – and if the two further releases due in this 30th year are anything like this, then I can sense a lot of folks also scouring their back-catalogue to see what other gems they have missed. [Derek Walker, The Phantom Tollbooth, 17 February 2019]

> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/love-revelation/1446477821)

CD tracklist:

01. Los Lunas – 4:12
02. Given Road – 3:40
03. Let You Down – 4:39
04. Broken Angels – 4:56.
05. Love & Revelation – 2:36
06. Making Pictures – 4:02
07. Betting on the Muse – 4:04
08. Leavin’ Days – 3:43
09. Rocking Chair – 3:51
10. May God Love You (Like You’ve Never Been Loved) – 3:55
11. An American in Belfast – 2:06

Note: Released on both CD and 12-inch vinyl LP.

[youtube_sc url=”” playlist=”8Ud_sZgDOgc,Wm9Dshb60QA,vXYs4Dm2zDQ,TV5HYRT7eMM,X-RuenOutAY,VK-dbpSFtsE,rL5_tL_X4h8,uIg40R-XMUA,fNUwWYk5LNI,m7tkea1CgsY,uBeeJrrmqJ4″ title=”Over the Rhine, Love and Revelation – Los Lunas + Given Road + Let You Down + Broken Angels + Love and Revelation + Making Pictures + Betting on the Muse + Leavin’ Days + Rocking Chair + May God Love You (Like You’ve Never Been Loved) + An American in Belfast” autohide=”1″ rel=”0″]