Over the Rhine - Snow Angels (12 tracks) +Album Reviews

4.5 Stars.... Long awaited second Christmas album from OtR i

Paul Allaer | Cincinnati | 10/19/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In 1996, Over the Rhine released a Christmas album called "The Darkest Night of the Year" that consisted mostly of originals and a few reworked Christmas traditionals, and the album was an immediate 'hit' with OtR fans. The album was a strong reason for the very successful annual Christmas tour the band continues to make to this day, and over the years the band introduced several Christmas originals at those shows, prompting the question "when can we expect a new collection of Christmas songs?". Well, that question has finally been answered.

"Snow Angels" (12 tracks; 43 min.) starts off with one those concert classics, "All I Ever Get for Christmas Is Blue", a fabulous song and it's nice to finally get the studio version. "Darling (Christmas Is Coming") and "White Horse" are in the same vein (also also concert staples). "Goodbye Charles" is a piano-jazzy instrumental. "Snowed In With You" is a prime example of why this album works s well: a light, jazzy tone, with an irresistable winter/Christmas undertone. This album contains nothing but originals, and works terrific from start to finish. How many contemporary artists can bring a Christmas album without any covers, and actually pull it off? Well OtR has on "Snow Angels". Karin Bergquist's lead vocals sounds as warm as ever, and the perfect voice for a Christmas album as you settle in for the night in front of the open fire.

In all, "Snow Angels" is a terrific, if long delayed, follow-up to "The Darkest Night of the Year", and in fact may even have topped it. Please note that the band actually self-released this album in November, 2006, and now this is getting a much-deserved national release. This year's OtR traditional homecoming Christmas show at the Taft Theatre in Cincinnati is set for December 15, and you can bet that I will be there, as I have been for many years. I just hope it won't take another 10 years before OtR releases another Christmas album (although the band has hinted that might exactly be the case). This album is highly recommended. BUY IT! You won't be disappointed."

Christmas Winner

jti105 | 10/27/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've never written a review but Amazon emailed me with the opportunity and this is a terrific cd, so here goes. I'm a Christmas Rock nut, have made several Christmas mixes (120 minutes each), and have everything from Stevie Nix's "Silent Night" to Mary Karlzen's "Run Rudolph Run" to Wall of Voodoo's "Shouldn't Have Given Him a Gun for Christmas", etc. While it's crazy to call anything the best, this may well be the best individual artist Christmas cd made. I've been a kinda-fan of Over the Rhine for a long time, and "All I Need is Everything" is one of my favorite songs. But this Christmas CD is spectacular, especially considering the album is nearly all original songs. The rare covers ("Little Town" and "One Olive Jingle) and are remade with clever and unique arrangements. The CD is rock, blues and a pinch of jazz, and offers a fine variety of songs, all the way from the splendid "All I ever get for Christmas is Blue" to the pop, catchy and fun "Darlin' (Christmas is Coming)" to the sad and wistful title track. I highly recommend Snow Angels."

Beautifully Haunting

Whitney | 11/19/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I rarely enjoy Christmas albums, but this is one I'm going to treasure for a long time to come. The first two tracks are probably my favorite, especially the more upbeat "Darlin' (Christmas Is Coming)". This entire album invokes feelings of sitting by the window with hot cider and watching the snow fall as there's a fire crackling somewhere behind you. Waiting, waiting for your love to come home. I definitely recommend this album to anyone who enjoys good music, and I guess to anyone who enjoys Christmas music as well, haha. I'll still be listening to this come June and July though."

The scary beauty of what's right here

David A. Baer | Indianapolis, IN USA | 12/29/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"You may never listen to another Christmas album like Over the Rhine's SNOW ANGELS. You may end up listening to no other.

OtR brings to Yuletide their bedazzling touch with the blues and their stupendous way with a lyric. Christmas is before all else a Christian celebration, which to this reviewer causes a bit of a squirm when devoutly secular artists toss off an album to the cause (are you out there, Sarah McLachlan?). OtR does not posture itself within that bandwidth we call `contemporary Christian'. So what do they do with, say, a manger?

The short answer: lots.

OtR is not so much Christian in the popular sense as they are theological in the existential sense. Rather than traffic in the clichés of a religious movement they probe to the deep structure from which those movements emerge and, in their best moments, nourish themselves. The OtR soul has trafficked heavily not only in biblical motifs but also the (post-)Amish and camp meeting millieus that sink their roots deeply into that material and its ever-renewing traditions.

What to do, the, with the season?:

In `Darling (Christmas is Coming)':

Tear these thorns from my heart

Help the healing to start

Let's set this old world free

Let's start with you and me

Darlin' Christmas is coming

Salvation bells are ringing

Darlin' Christmas is coming

Do you believe in angels singing

Darin' the snow is falling

Falling like forgiveness from the sky

The tentacles of that last phrase reach out in several directions, several of them organically connected to what Christians still like to call `Advent'. The fierce warrior angel Gabriel and a number of things virtually fall from the sky in the gospels' infancy narratives. Forgiveness works nicely as an abbreviation of the lot.

`White Horse' is carol cum lullaby cum hymn cum revelation. Its lyric, its lyricism, and its harmony move old souls as though they weighed but a pebble. Soaked in allusions to both biblical testaments, it is a particularly inviting example of those messianic catenae that have exercised New Testament scholars.

Or this line of thinking from the `more-here-than-what-you-thought drivenness of `Here It Is':

When they blow Gabriel's horn

Rip fiction from fact

I want to get caught

In some radical act

Of love and redemption

The sound of warm laughter

Some true conversation

With a friend or my lover

Somewhere down the road

We'll lift up our glass

And toast the moment

And moments past

The heartbreak and laughter

The joy and the tears

The scary beauty

Of what's right here

But don't settle too deeply into the theological for in `North Pole Man' Karin Bergquist peels the paint off your winter lair. Angels blush.

Indeed, angels may blush from start to finish of this extraordinary Christmas collection. If not for the ardent sensuality of Bergquist's occasional blues--less frequently heard here than in OtR's ordinary repertoire--then for the sheer glory of words about heavenly doings well spoken and deliciously sung."

Christmas originals worthy of the classics

Music Omnivore | Middle o' the States | 12/05/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I don't have the "Over the Rhine" cred of you longtime fans, but I'll jump on your small but passionate bandwagon for this one. I have been completely disengaged from Christmas music for several years and needed something new to get with the spirit.

This is a perfect antidote to most of the commercial music trotted out this time of year. The Christmas music "product" generally is either meant to augment the mall experience, draw easy, treacly sentiment, or gesture for world peace.

I knew this collection would be different with the first song, "All I Get For Christmas Is Blue." People who find themselves turning melancholy by degrees as the sun treks southward in November will recognize this feeling right away.

Most of the album has a similar tone, with subtle variations. It feels at times like standing in a freezing field looking up at stars thrown across a jet-black sky. But human strife doesn't obey the seasons, and war's affects are also at hand down on earth.

It's not all heaviness though. The delights of a "snow day" are portrayed in "Snowed In With You." "North Pole Man" generates heat in a "Santa Baby" way (but with soul rather than the latter's kitsch). I'm guessing "Goodbye Charles" is a Charles Schulz tribute via Vince Guaraldi's music for "A Charlie Brown Christmas." In fact, I thought it was a cover of a piece from that collection.

All in all, a lovely album, and one that will wear well through the years."

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