Music Reviews - Jeffrey Overstreet

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Music Reviews

A collection of 13 posts

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus

In the Bible of contemporary gospel music, Nick Cave’s new pair of albums prove he’s a Major Prophet. Like David Eugene Edwards (of Sixteen Horsepower and Woven Hand), Cave’s brutal honesty, surreal symbolism, zeal for the sublime, and righteous anger at himself and the reset of humanity

Overstreet's Favorite Recordings: 2005

I'll admit it. I did not keep up with the world of music the way I have in the past. On average, I listened to a new album every week, but the time I'd planned to spend writing about them was swallowed by film-writing assignments and

Overstreet's Favorite Recordings: 2006

About this list: Once again, I find myself looking forward to hearing a long list of albums that have come highly recommended... but I haven't had the time to give them proper attention. (That's what a full-time job, weekly review-and-column deadlines, and three book deadlines will

On Songs & Albums

My Favorite Music Reviewer Speaks

Andy Whitman, my favorite writer at Paste Magazine, delivered a lecture at the Trinity Arts Conference last week. I missed it. My work schedule prevented me from attending, and it hurt to miss out. Nobody writes about music with more passion than Andy. And few can draw from such a

On Songs & Albums

Overstreet's Favorite Recordings: 2007

1. I'm Not There - Original SoundtrackWhat a marvel: a two-disc marathon of Bob Dylan songs covered by excellent artists, and almost every single attempt is a knockout. There have been a lot of bad covers of Dylan songs. Too many. But in a year when Dylan was

Overstreet's Favorite Recordings: 2007

1. I'm Not There - Original SoundtrackWhat a marvel: a two-disc marathon of Bob Dylan songs covered by excellent artists, and almost every single attempt is a knockout. There have been a lot of bad covers of Dylan songs. Too many. But in a year when Dylan was

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (2007)

If you haven't heard Raising Sand, you're in for a treat. Who would have thought that we'd ever see the collaboration by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss? Who was bold enough to dream they'd perform songs by Tom Waits and Sam Phillips

Over the Rhine - Drunkard's Prayer

My original review of this album is restored below. • All marriages are broken. We’re broken people, and when we commit to each other, for better or worse, we are guaranteed that there will be difficult — sometimes severely painful — times. How we respond to those trials will depend largely on

Overstreet’s Favorite Recordings: 2004

Overstreet’s Favorite Recordings: 2004

The wall has come down. By my lights, anyway, it appears that this was the year that brought it crumbling to the ground. When I was a teenager, I lived in a world where Christian music existed in a carefully protected city with high walls, where we whispered about the

100% Pure Yorkshire Beauty

Ever dream about going down to a pub and discovering one of those mysteriously gorgeous Yorkshire lasses with that mysteriously gorgeous way of singing, the voice that just carries you off into melancholy storytelling about the sea, about unrequited love, about hardship and longing...? Okay, maybe that's my

The Innocence Mission - Birds of My Neighborhood

April 2006 UPDATE: The new re-mastered version of The Innocence Mission's Birds of My Neighborhood lets this masterful recording expand to fill a room, resonating in hardwood floors, giving the listener the freedom to move about in the spaces between Don Peris's exquisite guitar stylings and

Over the Rhine's "Ohio": A Double Dose of Brilliance

"I want to do better, I want to try harder," sings Karin Bergquist at the opening of Disc 2 in Over the Rhine's monstrous, beautiful, country-laced double-album Ohio. The next line in the same lyric gets at the essence of the album: "I want to

Sam Phillips - A Boot and a Shoe

Sam Phillips - A Boot and a Shoe

When no one’s listening I have so much to say... That’s a line from “How to Quit,” the first song on Sam Phillips’ A Boot and a Shoe. It’s a loaded line. She’s been a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter since her debut The Indescribable Wow in 1988.