Josh Ritter - “The Historical Conquest of Josh Ritter”
- MP3 “To the Dogs or Who Ever”
- Myspace
- Official website (Stream full album)
- Purchase Album
- Boston Show - 10/4 and 10/5 at Somerville Theatre (view all tour dates)
Links of Interest:
In the upcoming release by Josh Ritter (out tomorrow, 8/20), “The Historical Conquest of Josh Ritter” (kind of a bold title if you ask me), Josh announces that the “record is an effort to capture moments when they were at their most passionate”. He explains how all the songs have this rawness to them because they were captured on the fly. Instead of tooling around for hours on a song, they would be hanging out and all of a sudden an idea popped in to their heads and recorded it. And didn’t change it.
Why did Josh decide to go this route? Was it because his last record lacked the passion and rawness that he feels this record captures? I would saw yes to the rawness but no to the passion. On his last album, “The Animal Years”, Josh was focused on a political message and wanted to make sure that each song delivered the message he was looking for (like every good politician should do before opening their mouth). But the songs were very clean and straightforward. The one downfall with Josh is that he’s not the most prolific guitar player. He’s know Nick Drake. Then again, who is.
Continue reading after the jump
But Bob Dylan wasn’t a great guitar player nor was Johnny Cash. The latter willfully admits this. Most Dylan and Cash songs consist of two or three chords. But it’s the vocal lines intertwined in the chords that we find Dylan and Cash’s immortal presence. It is Their ability to suck you in to a song like Morgan Freeman’s ability to suck you in to a tale about Penguins that makes them so special.
Any songwriter will tell you this is their goal. To tell you a story in a way that compels you to focus on the message they are out to deliver. They want to deliver the story in an entertaining way and one that resonates with a large audience not a select few.
The question is, does he achieve every songwriters goal? My answer is both yes and no. I do think that this album is more raw then the last album. I also feel the addition of more instruments will help build Josh’s audience as I think many people who didn’t enjoy his last album may be able to find some appeal in Historical. But I’m not completely feeling the connection with his lyrics. Over the last couple years I’ve tried very hard to focus on lyrics when listening to singer/songwriters because it’s really what defines this type of artist. Lyrics like, “My orchestra’s gigantic. This thing could sink the Titanic,” just doesn’t work for me. For one, the Titanic did sink and was and is considered one of engineerings biggest blunders so while I understand what he’s trying to say here, I think it would have been better to say, “this thing could fill up the Atlantic” or something like that. Sometimes his ranting and fast talking remind me of these dime a dozen rappers that are spitting out rhymes that don’t mean anything. But in their case, they make videos with rump shaking so it doesn’t matter what they say or what their songs mean. However, I don’t think Josh is going to come out with any rump shaking videos any time soon.
It’s refreshing when an artist will walk in to a studio, sit down, lay a few tracks out and bam, you have an album. In the old days of recording, it wasn’t rare or rather a risk for bands to walk in to a studio and come out with a finished album the same day they walked in. It happened all the time. So I applaud Josh for going this route as many recording artists have lost this raw appeal. While it may not have taken him only a day to record, his intentions were there. He just needs to translate his focused message from his previous album over to his new rawness recording style and I think he may be on to something.
Comments
2 Responses to “Josh Ritter - “The Historical Conquest of Josh Ritter””
Leave a Reply
Hello, nice post. Bookmark it.
Saw/heard this on Letterman last night and for the first time in a long time was called to attention! I like it!
Jud