Sunday Music Spotlight – Josh Ritter

Like fellow Sunday Music Spotlighter Dan Bern, Josh Ritter gets saddled with comparisons to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Author Stephen King went so far as to say that Ritter’s song “Thin Blue Flame” was “the most exuberant outburst of imagery since Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ ” while claiming that his album The Animal Years was “the best album of the year [2006] in a walk, and maybe the best album I’ve heard in the last five”. That’s high praise coming from someone that knows imagery.

Coming off the tremendous critical success of The Animal Years Ritter decided to hole himself up in a cabin in Maine a record a new album. The result is The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter (out August 21st), a complicated yet accessible album that reveals more layers with each listen. There’s more rock and less folk than on his previous albums, but the change seems more like an evolution than a departure.

Josh Ritter - Rumors

Representative of Ritter’s new rock sensibilities, “Rumors” abandons his stripped down instrumentation in favor of piano, organ, and horns. The results are toe-tappingly good.

Josh Ritter - Good Man

This song from The Animal Years was featured to great effect in this season’s finale of House, MD.

Bonus Videos:

“Kathleen” (from Hello Starling) live:

Preview of The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter :

Links:
Buy The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter at Amazon
Buy The Animal Years at Amazon

Official Site