JOSH RITTER
The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter catches the Idaho musician in the midst of a radical transformation. While last year’s The Animal Years had Ritter thinking about the state of the nation, his latest offering finds him pining for Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and Florence Nightingale, all of whom seem to be stuck together in the belly of a whale, a la Jonah. He also manages to squeeze in a few admiring words about ladies underwear and that’s well before Ritter, backed by drums, bass and organ and cacophony, arrives at a rollicking chorus you might be able sing along with if you’re quick enough to get all the words.
Ritter is clearly having fun and you will, too, but there is a method to his madness. Those legendary heroines he name-checks were each responding to an inner voice that pushed them toward some extraordinary mission, one both noble and a little foolhardy. “Those voices can be pretty confusing,” he says, “but there is no doubt that if you follow your two a.m. voices you’ll end up someplace fairly extraordinary.”
Says Ritter in summary, “On my last disc, The Animal Years, I went pretty deep inside the gears of what I do. I knew where the words fit and how the songs dovetailed with each other.” He adds, however, “If I hadn’t approached the writing that record on such a clockmaker’s level, I may not have decided to step back and try shooting the clock to pieces on Historical Conquests. I’m glad we did though,” he adds. “I wanted to blow something up.”
Given the new lyrical and musical trails that he is blazing, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter proves that one can still cross any number of Rubicons all the while not taking themselves too seriously. Historic indeed.
– Michael Hill
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