Item! Over the Rhine just finished recording a new album, called Born, slated for release on 29 March 2005¹. Linford’s November 2004 letter has all the details. They are touring too, but aren’t coming close enough for me to go see them without planning an overnight stay somewhere. I really enjoyed seeing them last year when they played at Go! Room 4.

In other news, I have been wanting to make a good Christmas mix CD for some time now to combat the endless onslaught of dreck like the Ronette’s version of “Frosty the Snowman”, etc. that passes for holiday music here. Not that I have anything against Frosty, or “The Christmas Song”, or all that, I just hate hearing those so-called standards overandoverandoverandover. As Mission of Burma sang once, “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”².

Anyways, what does this have to do with Over the Rhine?

Well, for starters, I would have to consider putting at least one or two tracks from The Darkest Night of the Year on my mix. Just don’t ask me which ones yet; I haven’t decided. I’d also have to put something from Low’s Christmas EP, because, you know, Low rocks, albeit slowly.

Finally: in order to keep it real, as they say, I’d have to include Run DMC’s new classic, “Christmas In Hollis”. JUST BECAUSE I CAN.

I’ll let you know if this beast ever gets made.

¹ In Linford’s letter, it’s called BORN. IN ALL CAPS. I’m not sure if this is intended to be a part of the title. Evidence for an all-caps title: they mention OHIO in their discography, but every other release is regularly-cased (i.e. Good Dog Bad Dog, Amateur Shortwave Radio, etc.). If this is true, I have a lot of MP3s to retag. I will stop obsessing about this now.

² This is funny, because, as most of you know, I don’t even like guns³.

³ However, I do own a Nerf^tm^ gun, though, but it doesn’t count⁴.

⁴ Enough with the footnotes, already!

UPDATE: Holy, holy, holy crap. Jimmy Eat World has their own Christmas EP, featuring a cover of Low’s “If You Were Born Today” from their Christmas EP. From the snippet I heard on the iTMS, it’s basically the same song, not much to add, really. However, I vastly prefer Alan Sparhawk’s and his wife Mimi’s harmony to whoever the lead singer is in Jimmy Eat World.