Over The Rhine To Release Holiday Album Blood Oranges In The Snow on November 4th

Over The Rhine
12/20/2014
Taft Theatre, 317 E 5th St, Cincinnati, OH
7pm doors, 8pm show, Buy Tickets

The highly acclaimed musical duo Over The Rhine will release Blood Oranges In The Snow, a collection of new holiday-inspired songs, on November 4th via their own Great Speckled Dog label.  Blood Oranges In The Snow reveals a genre which Over The Rhine has cleverly coined “Reality Christmas Music”.  The collection of songs reflects the many emotions experienced during the holidaze…nostalgia, joy and love, of course – but also profound sadness and loss.

Over The Rhine is the Ohio-based husband/wife duo of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist who have been collaborating for well over two decades.  Though the couple writes most of their own material, they also have a talent for beautiful and original interpretation, which is very evident on this collection.  Blood Oranges In The Snow continues the tradition of holiday-inspired music from the band, following up their two previous holiday releases The Darkest Night Of The Year (1996) and Snow Angels (2006). Over The Rhine’s work has been praised by Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, NPR, and American Songwriter who wrote “Detweiler and Bergquist have exquisitely crafted songs with no wasted notes or unneeded embellishment…gems that should last until the end of the world”.

The songs on Blood Oranges In The Snow are filled with emotionally nuanced textures and expansive lyrics.  The bittersweet “Another Christmas” explores a desire to find joy in the original meaning and spirit of Christmas while acknowledging the realities of ongoing violence throughout the world.  “Bethlehem” echoes that sentiment with a cry for peace, and a message that is both timeless and timely.  The duo’s arrangement of the Merle Haggard classic “If We Make It Through December,” which is slower and has more breathing room than the original version, helps to draw attention to the lyrics and the fact that the pressure to spend money during the holidays falls at a difficult time for many families.  But as serious as this all seems, Over The Rhine has peppered the album with gems like “First Snowfall” and “Snowbirds” which bring the collection full circle with dashes of humor and hopefulness.

During the commercialized and overly hyped holiday season, Over The Rhine’s Blood Oranges In The Snowstands out as an album that is beautiful, touching and very relatable.  Reality Christmas.