Listening Log: “The Long Surrender” by Over the Rhine

Just finished listening to the latest (as yet unreleased) long player from Over the Rhine, wonderfully titled The Long Surrender. It’s pretty great, but in the interest of not spoiling it for anyone, I’ll just offer a few brief reactions:

• Strikes me as a cross between Drunkard’s Prayer (instrumentally) and Good Dog, Bad Dog (thematically). No disrespect to The Trumpet Child, but this is the record I was hoping they’d follow up Drunkard’s Prayer with!
• Joe Henry did a fantastic job with the production. These tracks are as dense and mysterious as a dark forest. This is a total “headphones” album!
• That’s a gorgeous album cover.
• Was that Lucinda Williams on track 5?

All in all, I think the L&K Express has gone and made one of the best records of their career.  Can’t wait to get my hands on it come January 11th.

UPDATE: Read my actual review here.