“While the cracking heart-rending vocals and poetic pathos remain Berlin’s trademarks, the strings (arranged by Brendan Cooney) give the ensemble of lyrical observations a story without words.”
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Matt Robinson, Northeast Performer 11/08
“with his wonderfully craggy voice - think Nick Cave meets John Cale. His lyrics are, fittingly, a heady brew of lament and cynicism”
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Claire, The Boston Tea Party 11/08
“A- With ambient street noise and the hushed sighs of a string quartet, his brand of art-rock cabaret recalls Lou Reed channeling Kurt Weill - and it’s just as spooky”
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Nate Dow, Boston Herald 10/08
"Berlin remains one of the best songwriters to ever come out of Boston. Like Roy Orbison, Rick Berlin sings songs for the lonely. His characters are just a shade different from Orbison's however. On second thought, many shades different."
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Kevin O'Hare, The Plain Dealer-Cleveland
“OLD STAG - dazzling musical curiosities...a lyrical magnum opus”
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Tristram Lozaw, Boston Globe 10/08
“...brilliant lyricism (see: “Happy Lesbians in the Snow” and “John Lennon’s Nose”), tender and varied instrumentation, and Berlin’s tremulous vocal like a flickering bulb at the dark end of a creepy hallway. It may be his best recording yet — which is saying a lot.”
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Michael Brodeur - 10/08, Boston Phoenix
“You could call Old Stag alternative rock with a folkie tinge, or even orchestrated Americana, but it’s certainly both stylistically different and very refreshing...provocative lyricist and edgy vocalist”
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Ron Wynn, Nashville City Paper 9/08
“It’s impossible not to feel his experience in your gut, as his voice floats from whimsy to heartbreak, from ecstasy to absurdity, from wisdom to mystification, all set to words and music that unspool countless reels of a life lived fully”
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Joe Coughlin, the Noise - 9/08
“He's unconventional as a piano player, and cares not a whit for genre limitations. He takes chances and stretches musical boundaries. And we are so lucky”
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Lexi Kahn, Altar Native '07
“Berlin is an incredibly honest and touching songwriter and performer with a quirky charm, full of love for humans in our absurd glory, a gorgeous compassion for the world in all its extremes, both beautiful and horrible”
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Sady Sullivan, The Weekly Dig '07
“Talk all you want about Steven Tyler, Aimee Mann, Peter Wolf or a thousand others. To these ears, the best and brightest songwriter Boston ever produced was the forever-underrated Rick Berlin”
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Face Magazine '07
"Me & Van Gogh" is an intimate, idiosyncratic collection of verite snapshots and cocktail-napkin sketches that together make up a tender, grandly tormented portrait of people wounded by dreams and bruised by experience.
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Jonathan Perry, The Boston Globe Top Ten '06
“...plucked-from-life stories, tough piano playing. He approaches the instrument like a good punk-rock guitarist, driving the grooves in a spare forceful way, yet darting into angular blocks of sound and laying snatches of melody over his rhythm lines”
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TED DROZDOWSKI, Cellars By Starlight - The Boston Phoenix '06
“the melodies could have passed muster in the Brill Building; the songs are about something, narratives shaded with compassion and wit and experience”
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Robin Vaughan, The Boston Herald '06
“Berlin is the traveling troubadour of the Boston scene, bringing the stories of one neighborhood to another in his songs. berlin is boston”
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Jon Garelick, The Boston Phoenix '06
“For the uninitiated, be prepared; the songs are startlingly confessional, filled with the kind of soul-bearing + rapid-fire beauty that has always been Berlin’s trademark.”
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Kevin O’Hare, THE SPRINGFIELD UNION-NEWS '06
“he willingly shares the highs and lows of his life with a level of depth rarely captured through song”
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Christopher Muther, BAY WINDOWS (Rants and Raves) '04
“'Jacques' is the best live CD I have ever heard. Some tracks make you laugh, some think, some almost make you want to cry, and some just make you want to hang your mouth open and say 'huh?'”
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Peter Oberth, flick magazine '02
“Er heißt nicht nur Berlin, er ist wie Berlin: Wild, ungezügelt, hart, ein Chansonnier, der rauhe Wärme ausstrahlt, immer unfertig, immer auf der Suche, voller Gegensätze. Es ist unmöglich, ihn zu hören, ohne wirklich zuzuhören”
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Robert von Rimscha, Washington Bureau Chief, DER TAGESSPIEGEL '01
“Like Elton John possessed by the spirit of Jonathan Richman, Berlin's gift is in the way he combines emotional directness and sensitivity with playfulness and humor. ”
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Jajjguy Maurice, The Noise '99
“Rick crawls inside his subjects and pushes them out with humor and detail like awkward children standing at the front of the class with their pants down”
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Kevin Connolly, ARLINGTON ARTS NEWS '97
