“Rolling Over Me” by Eddie Berman

The strings play quite vibrantly to a careful beat as we look in on the opening chords of “Rolling Over Me” by Eddie Berman and his band. The harmony has yet to enter the fold, but there’s already a classiness to these first few bars that feels like the perfect bridge between pop/rock and folk.

We’re about to witness a blossoming flower of a single not only pull us closer to its harmonies but the man at the center of them as well, and whether this is your first time listening to Eddie Berman or you discovered him earlier in 2023 via his engaging single “Mine All Mine,” I think you’re going to find the substance of this performance to be quite appealing indeed. This song is the first single from Eddie’s upcoming album ‘Signal Fire,” release date 1/19 by Nettwerk.

“On the summit it was golden / Could only stand it for a moment / ‘Til smoke came up / And was rolling over me” croons the retrospective Berman to a beat that feels slow but appropriately so. There’s so much melancholy in his lyricism, but his voice suggests that there might be a little optimism waiting for us on the other side of the horizon in this track.

He wants us to see the luminous glare at the end of the darkness to make us appreciate all of the warmth it has in store for an audience chilled by these verses, and in the grander scheme of things, I think his approach can be described as both progressive and just postmodern enough to fit in well with the surreal folk movement.

I’d love to hear a proper duet between Berman and someone else in folk music, particularly a feminine vocalist, as I think his modus operandi with his band proves that he has what it takes to contend with some like-minded players when gearing towards the same goal. There’s a lot of luster in the bones of “Rolling Over Me,” and although I wouldn’t say that this is the most complete use of his skills as a folk musician and performer capable of translating emotion into sublime harmonies almost on the spot, we’re getting a good idea of what he could potentially accomplish if given the ability to do whatever he wants with his sound, countrified in nature or not.

If what I’ve been listening to in “Rolling Over Me” this week has been giving me a good idea of who Eddie Berman is and what kind of music he wants to put down in the future, there should be no doubts as to whether or not he’s got a big future ahead of him in folk music. There isn’t as much buzz in the folk underground now as there was just five short years ago, but an artist like Berman has a genuine shot to change that with his sound. There’s something to discover about his soul in this single, and I don’t believe you need to be a professional critic or a more noted folk music enthusiast than I am to recognize it in a single sit-down.

Mindy McCall