Every now and then, an artist comes up with a collection of songs that simply celebrates the sheer joy of making music, a record that is consequently a joy to listen to from start to finish. In the case of Over the Rhine, a band who has always had a sense of wonder and playfulness underscoring even some of their most serious and solemn efforts, the timing couldn't have been better. I've been following the band (group? duo?) ever since 2001's Films for Radio, which was a total oddity for the band due to its "big screen" sound with more pop-oriented production - it's still my favorite, but I learned to appreciate OtR's core aesthetic with the comparatively more sparse albums Ohio and Drunkard's Prayer. With the latter of those albums being a particularly quiet and intimate meditation on a marriage that almost fell apart, it only makes sense to follow up the comeback that Karin Bergquist and Linford Detwiler have made in their personal lives, and just make an album that celebrates their love for each other, their faith, and their keen sense of what makes a good tune, regardless of the genre language being spoken.

So what makes their newest record, The Trumpet Child, stand apart from their sparser efforts? Well, nothing as radically different for the group as the majority of Films for Radio, but you'll definitely notice more layers in the mix this time around - be it the playful horns on some of the jazzier tracks, or the percussion on some of the more groove-oriented tracks. There are some quieter songs, too, but for the most part this disc weaves back and forth between the folk/country stylings of their past efforts and more of a "cabaret" sort of style. It's hard to describe, really - OtR has always been about mish-mashing these disparate elements into a quirky and mesmerizing whole. I think the biggest difference is that you'd have to look harder to find a song here that feels like a bit of a "downer". That they can remain emotionally upbeat (for the most part) despite the tempo and stylistic flourishes of the individual songs, and not have the album come across as too precious to be believable, is definitely a feat. There are few bands out there who can add a touch of "sultry" or "sexy" to a song about politics or the Gospel (the unusually alluring sound of Karin's unique voice is what contributes a lot of that), and actually hope to make it work. Over the Rhine is fortunate enough to be one of them.

The lyrics won't disappoint here, either - as always, you're going to get the paradoxical analogies that catch you off guard, the juxtaposition of sacred imagery with things you thought a "Christian" band might consider profane, and the keen observations about relationships (be they human or spiritual) that have buoyed the group's best material thus far. In the midst of this celebration of the things that Linford and Karin love about life, there's a good exploration of the reasons why, so it's not a bunch of empty, feel-good sentiment. What's most striking to me is their ability to say something timely while doing it to the tune of rather "vintage" sounding music. All within the same album, they manage to draw lines between what is lust and what is love, wax poetic on how they wish the government worked, imagine what Armageddon might be like, and even pay specific tribute to one of their own favorite musicians. Maybe it's a bit of a grab bag compared to past albums that had more of a central theme, but then again, there are no duds here, no songs that I find myself getting bored with. Maybe one or two have a lyric that's too cute for its own good. But that's not nearly enough to keep this album from almost rising to the same colorful heights of Films for Radio - that one remains my favorite OtR album, but The Trumpet Child is definitely a close second.

I Don't Wanna Waste Your Time
I don't wanna waste good wine if you won't stick around
I love to laugh, but I'm more than just your alcoholic clown
I won't pray this prayer with you unless we both kneel down...
I swear, the vintage horn intro that starts off this song has a melody that's eerily close to the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". I suppose that helps to add to the olde-time feel of it - despite this being a playful album, OtR has actually opted for a fairly mellow opening, with simple piano being Karin's only musical accompaniment at first as she welcomes us in with a disclaimer: "I don't want to waste your time with music you don't need." She's telling us from the get-go that if we're not gonna get anything meaningful out of the music, then we should get out now. Wise words - it's annoying when people claim to love your music but they don't really seem to pay any attention to what you're trying to say. The horns come back in the middle of the second verse, which is also where the drums first show up - they cleverly come stumbling in when Karin declares, "I'm more than just your alcoholic clown". That verse not only manages to tie together with the music in a humorous way, but it also makes a sly reference to the theme of Drunkard's Prayer when it compares the experience of making music to both saying a prayer and pouring a glass of fine wine for the listener to drink. I'm pretty much a teetotaler in real life, but if Over the Rhine's music can be likened to an alcoholic beverage, then consider me a lush!

Trouble
What may seem complicated
Is overstated, downright misunderstood
Love will not be outdated
Maybe placated, but it's got to be good...
Karin brings a bit of the sexy here (unlike Justin Timberlake, she doesn't have to bring it back because it never left in the first place), counting off the bit with a cute little "Uh, uh, uh" and singing an ode to her husband's scruffy charm against a muted acoustic guitar strum that creates a wonderfully slinky rhythm for the band to follow. I don't quite want to call it a "tango", but it sort of has that flavor of a classy dance with a bit of sexual tension just underneath the surface. "If you came to make trouble", she coos, "make me a double, honey, I think it's good." It's mostly a bit of silly role playing just for the fun and allure of it, but Karin's still able to drop in weighty phrases like "nefarious pyromantics" to make you scratch your head a little.

I'm on a Roll
This oyster is my world, my oyster's got a pearl
This ain't no dress rehearsal, I'm a very lucky girl...
This song's probably the closest that Over the Rhine's lyrics have ever come to being total fluff, since this mostly a song about feeling pretty damn good just for its own sake without any sort of deeper analysis - it's all rainbows and silver linings to the point where I admit I sometimes get annoyed by it. Karin's lyrics are loaded with cute little metaphors that explain just how everything's coming up roses, which is all at once amusing and infuriating when she lets out a string of rhymes near the end of the song: "Just like I oughta... I can't be bothered... Cincinnati to Ensenada... From the thrift store to Prada... Le dee dah dah dee dah dah...", and so forth. It reminds me of some of those vocal jazz standards that, over time, have become a little too much about mugging for an audience for me to take seriously, but just when I'm thinking this one's a skipper, along comes a kick-@$$ slide guitar solo to save the day.

Nothing Is Innocent
All the king's men will serve scrambled eggs again
When white-washed walls come crashing down
We'll blink and nod, and say, "How odd"
And wonder why old friends don't come around...
Things get much more serious here with the spare plucking of an acoustic guitar to establish a rhythm that kind of forces you to imagine where each beat is supposed to fall until the brushing of the cymbals and light tapping of the drums begin to help you out in the second verse. Solid melody here, and it's paired with a sobering lyric about the complacency that all too frequently comes with age - it's that classic dilemma of looking back and wondering where your innocence went. Due to the sparser atmosphere, the upright bass, pedal steel, flute, vibes and Chamberlain all get to play an essential role in creating the song's mystical, somewhat wobbly mood. Karin sounds confused and a bit sorrowful, and it's all extremely well executed - this one's a sure highlight.

The Trumpet Child
The trumpet child will riff on love
Thelonious notes from up above
He'll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drum...
Speaking of highlights, the album's title track is a total show-stopper - a classic torch song that finds Karin quietly musing on what it would be like if the final trumpet sound that's supposed to mark the end of the world was an improvisational solo, as if played by some of her favorite jazz icons. It recasts a scenario that sounds terrifying and makes it sound like an act of creation, of rebirth, infusing the world with a heavenly sound that would make any audiophile fall to their knees. In addition to being an absolute vocal powerhouse for Karin (holy spumoni, can this girl belt it out or what?), it's got a smoldering trumpet solo (naturally), and quite frankly, Linford has managed to utilize the kind of creative language that blows the work of most self-identified "Christian songwriters" out of the water. If only the whole of CCM could unabashedly approach their faith with such inventive phrasing, perhaps the rest of the world wouldn't be so down on Christian music. This song is just that unbe-freakin-lievable.

Entertaining Thoughts
The way this works is so mysterious
If it gets much worse, it's called delirious
If I were mad, I would be furious
But this could be so much more than just another euphemism...
This upbeat, semi-country tune is almost a bit of a mood-killer after the outstanding title track - it's been compared to the last album's "Lookin' Forward" because it's an upbeat toe-tapper that sticks out like a sore thumb amidst more soulful and sultry numbers. It's basically another of Karin's cute come-ons to her husband - at times the playfulness of it is fun, but then I keep stumbling over the awkward line, "I've been entertaining thoughts all over you." There's another decent slide guitar solo here, though, and it's nice to have a few more upbeat tracks in the mix than you'd usually find on an OtR album, so even while it's not a song that I'd pick out individually as a highlight and I'd probably place it somewhere other than right after "The Trumpet Child", I still think it provides a worthwhile facet of the personality that this album displays as a whole.

Who'm I Kiddin' But Me
You smell like sweet magnolias
And Pentecostal residue
I'd like to get to know ya
And shake the holy fire right out of you...
Keeping things up-tempo (by OtR standards, at least), the band goes all swampy with ramshackle, bang-on-whatever type percussion and more of a bluesy chord progression as Karin plays the role of a good girl trying to keep herself from falling in love with the irresistible bad boy. (I can't take credit for the "swampy" description - bassist Brad Jones is actually credit with "Swampy Slide" on this one.) Karin brings out the quirkier facets of her voice here - it's funny how I thought she was a bit of an acquired taste when I first got into OtR, but now when I listen to one of their albums, I fully expect her to stretch and bend a lot of the words in odd ways, and I find myself entertained by it. "The devil's in the details", indeed.

Let's Spend the Day in Bed
We'll eat your favorite pie, ice cream on the side
Lie here a la mode, and just stay home...
The warm tones of an electric piano give this laid-back love song a bit less of an "organic" feel than some of the rest of the record - the music's actually closer to something that you might have found on Films for Radio, but the lyrics continue to mine the topic of relishing marital bliss. You'll probably guess from the title that the song's about sex, and that's certainly implied, but really, it's more about those times when you and your spouse just have to take a day off from the outside world, be lazy, and just enjoy watching TV and eating junk food and being with each other without needing to rush off and do ten million things. I love the sentiment of this song, but I find myself getting seriously distracted by the embarrassing line "We'll get stoned on love", which is unfortunately repeated many times during the song's vamp. So I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. Don't ask me why I'm not bothered by the alcohol metaphors, and yet a drug metaphor kind of kills this particular song for me. It might have something to do with the fact that the last time they sang about being stoned, it was definitely not in a good context (Ohio's "How Long Have You Been Stoned?") But maybe I'm just inconsistent for no good reason. We critics have that problem sometimes.

Desperate for Love
It might only take a kiss
For the plot to take a twist that you hadn't counted on
Just a tiny little minute
But eternity will be in it if you turn me on...
Here's another winner of a song, despite it taking on more of a depressed/cautionary tone like "Nothing Is Innocent" that might seem at odds with the rest of the album. There's nothing here but the piano, cello, and a cute little clarinet interlude to accompany Karin's voice, and yet the song feels more like a tease than a total downer. Linford (whose lyrics are vocalized wonderfully by his wife, as usual) is kind of poking fun at someone who seems to be a bit of an attention-wh*re, who is in and out of relationships and doesn't seem to be in it for the right reasons at all. Basically, he's playing the smallest violin in the world for her after she comes to him for sympathy, saying he doesn't buy into the melodrama, and warning her to not try the flirtatious act with him, lest it work and they both end up victims of another embarrassing fling.

Don't Wait for Tom
He wears a tuxedo made of sackcloth and ashes
Has a tattoo of a girl who can bat her eyelashes
Down on the river he was fishin' with a sword
He knocked off John the Baptist for a word from the Lord...
Completely out of left field comes this strange, gushing tribute to singer/songwriter Tom Waits - it's the first time we've heard Linford take the lead vocal on an OtR song since the equally strange "Jack's Valentine". Much like that song, he's doing a spoken word thing, this time coming up with a barrage of play-on-words references to Waits' music, while the percussion bangs and clatters about much like it would in one of Waits' song, as the piano and bass clarinet contrive to make the whole thing sound like an off-kilter bar tune. Karin backs up her husband with little vocal interjections during each verse, and then takes the lead for the catchy chorus - it's so strange that it somehow manages to work, and it turns out to be one of my absolute favorite OtR songs of all time, oddly enough. If I were actually a fan of Tom Waits, I'd probably love this song even more because I'd get all the references. (Sorry, I just can't get over the "carnival barker" voice. I'm glad they love him for his uniqueness, though.) But the way that Linford manages to weave together the scared and profane as he describes Tom's fictional escapades presumably mirrors Waits' own lyrical style (though thankfully, not his vocal style), and for that, I've gained a lot more respect for Waits even if I still don't really feel like listening to any of his stuff.

(Listen closely in the gap between this track and the next, for a brief little quote of "Beautiful Dreamer" and a giggle from Karin.)

If a Song Could Be President
We'd make Neil Young a Senator
Even though he came from Canada
Emmylou would be Ambassador
World leaders would listen to her...
The album's focused has definitely shifted to "meta-music" at the end of the album - ending with a politically-charged country song (that I'd half-expect to have heard from the Dixie Chicks if they had actually stuck to writing country songs) that name-checks many more of the group's musical heroes and humorously suggests that they be put in various positions of power, using the common language to bring peace to the world or some such nonsense. Really, this one's more of a cute way to express empathy with all of those who are saddened and frustrated by the current administration here in the U.S. of A. - it doesn't make much logical sense when you think about it, because if a song were President, then shouldn't all of those other positions be filled by songs instead of the people who wrote them? And who says that these people are in any way equipped to do such jobs? Oh, well, it doesn't keep me from smirking as they muse on the reaction that the world would have to the foreign and domestic policies laid out by these various troubadours. It seems weird to close the album with two songs that are essentially "music about music", but now that I think of it, "I Don't Want to Waste Your Time" is about the group's very reason for making music, and the title track definitely has a theme about the symbolic role that music plays in the second coming of Christ, so I guess this is all in keeping with one of the album's motifs, even if it makes it feel a bit schizophrenic with all of the lovey-dovey stuff. Listeners who lean to the right and who actually still like George W. Bush (you know, all twelve of them) will likely be put off by the "underachiever-in-chief" line, but I for one am glad that in a world where it's assumed that "religious" automatically means "right-wing" and vice versa, a few songwriters are willing to speak up and say that they see no conflict in being both Christian and skewing to the left. I don't lean too much in either direction myself, but I appreciate having a little more balance, to reflect the fact that God is neither a Democrat nor a Republican.

So there you have it - 11 songs of playful musings on plenty of important subjects, while never once coming across as sounding self-important. It's all so effortless for OtR, and even when a song isn't my style or an isolated lyric gets on my nerves, it still feels like OtR could record an album like this in their sleep and still have it be a rousing success.

ALBUM WORTH:
I Don't Wanna Waste Your Time $1.50
Trouble $1
I'm on a Roll $.50
Nothing Is Innocent $1.50
The Trumpet Child $2
Entertaining Thoughts $1
Who'm I Kiddin' But Me $1
Let's Spend the Day in Bed $.50
Desperate for Love $1.50
Don't Wait for Tom $1.50
If a Song Could Be President $1
TOTAL: $13

Band Members:
Karin Bergquist: Lead vocals, acoustic guitar, piano
Linford Detwiler: Piano, guitar, vocals, pretty much everything else

Website: http://www.overtherhine.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Romancing