Love Songs for Grown Ups

Not quite a decade ago, Over the Rhine was finally coming to Orlando, my hometown. I was still there at the time, and I couldn't wait. The state of Florida can be a geographical inconvenience for smaller indy-bands, not worth the gas and the effort to travel all the way down the peninsula somewhere between Atlanta, Athens, Birmingham and New Orleans. Besides, Orlando doesn't quite have the cool indy reputation for such acts. This time, however, with the wind of their epic record Ohio filling their sails, husband and wife duo Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler were heading to the sunshine state.

Then, before the tour came to any palm trees, they sent an email out to all of their fans. Their marriage was suffering, and that was more important than concert-hall serenades. They cancelled the remaining shows went back to their southern Ohio home to work, to talk and to reconcile. Once again, no Orlando concert (and when they finally came a couple of years later, I was across the sea and literally over the Rhine), but ever since that season of forgiveness, reconciliation and redemptive love, Over the Rhine's music aged like French wine. Their love songs, already some of the best on the market, grew up, taking on new dimensions of desire, regret, pain, healing and beauty.

There have been several albums since, and the latest manifestation just came out on February 8. Some albums, I like at first listen and then later realize we have less in common. There are other albums that feel uncomfortable at first but win my heart as the CD spins and I begin to understand. I have loved The Long Surrender since I first heard a few clips on an NPR interview and continue to do so after saturating my work and my leisure with every track (you can listen for free by clicking the "record player" link on their website. Let me know if you agree - hopefully my enthusiasm hasn't damaged impression by way of expectation).

Working with producer Joe Morgan for the first time, The Long Surrender is full of musical adventures not previously explored on Over the Rhine records. Keys are pressed, strings are plucked, percussion instruments are tapped, tickled, pattered and beat in places new and refreshingly unexpected. The feel of the album is an old Paris nightclub full of smoke and expatriates. Or perhaps a 1920s Cincinnati speakeasy, full of jazz, smoke and women in flapper hats. In fact, I think that cities and municipalities should lift their smoking bans whenever Over the Rhine roles into town, just to give their concerts a proper ambiance.

It opens with a call of sort: in "Laugh of Recognition" Bergquist sings out: "C'mon boys! Time to settle down/What do you think you'll gain from all this runnin' around?" The journey of love, relationship, pain, hope and brokenness continues. And of course, a major theme is their own marriage: honest love songs to and for and about the other. Yet their story, unique as it is, is full of universal thoughts and emotions, left unexplored in so much of today's art about love. In interviews, Bergquist and Detweiler remark that while most love songs are about the beginning of a relationship, theirs are about what happens next. And the truth is, what happens next is a majority of the time. Those of us in what happens next need songs, stories, support and celebration.

It would be easy for such art to be lovey-dovey kitsch. It would be just as easy to focus on the darkness, to despair of marriage, relationship and long-term love. As I've alluded to before, the art that appeals to me is complex enough to include for better and for worse. Thankfully, somewhere between Disney and films like Revolutionary Road stand mature songs like "Undamned," "Oh Yeah, By the Way" and that deliciously wordy history of the Berkquist/Detweiler marriage, "Infamous Love Song." These songs are balm for those of us who believe marriage is so much more than a piece of paper from the city hall, for those who believe marriage is beautiful, earthy, spiritual and sacramental, for those of us who believe it is God's artwork: wonderful, full of depth and sadly tainted by the fall. We rejoice with relief when in "Days Like This," we hear Bergquist sing:

"All I wanna do is live my life honestly/I just wanna wake up and see your face next to me/Every regret I have I will go set it free/It will be good for me."

Given all of this, it shouldn't surprise us that grace is another reoccurring theme. The album's closing anthem, "All My Favorite People," is the sort of song you can sing waiving a Bible or a bottle of beer. Book or beverage, we sing along:

"All my favorite people are broken/Believe me, my heart should know... All my friends are part saint and part sinner/we lean on each other/try to rise above/We're not afraid to admit that we're still beginners/We're all late bloomers/When it comes to love."

One of the most honest lines you'll ever hear is the title and chorus of the song: "Only God Can Save Us Now." The song is inspired by the nursing home where Karin Bergquist's mother lives. "Only God can save us now" was the exclamation of one of her mother's fellow residents. The song describes the crazy antics of the seniors and reflects that there's a good chance that will be our final stop as well. When we get there, we remember there are some things only God can do.

The Long Surrender navigates the joy and pain of love honestly and carefully. With its detailed production, I will say it lacks the spontaneous power of Drunkard's Prayer, the 2005 album that was born when they stopped their tour before I could see them in Florida. Drunkard's Prayer, along with the German worship music of Andrea Adams-Frey and Albert Frey (another married music duo), helped me to take courage and begin the journey of my own marriage. (The title track if that album, incidentally, has one of my all-time favorite lines in song: "You're my water, you're my wine/You're my whisky from time to time.") But, The Long Surrender makes me root for Over the Rhine as a band, because their songs speak to thing in ways so many others don't express, in ways that continue help me. It since they lay it all out there, The Long Surrender also makes me root for their marriage, for my marriage and for other marriages, infinitely more important than any music a marriage may produce.

And whenever I root, I pray. I can't help it. I believe, as much as I believe the chair on which I sit will continue to hold me, that our Lord entered this world and sympathizes with our weaknesses. All his favorite people are broken, because, we all are. We lean on each other, and we all lean on Him, to rise above. And He, the ultimate lover, love incarnate, intimately understands the joys and pains of love, in marriage or otherwise.