Josh Ritter started his career as an acoustic singer-songwriter. He eventually pulled a Dylan and now plays with a full band, but they perform under his name and the emphasis is squarely on him. I’ve been listening to the guy for about a year, and his album So Runs the World Away has become a favorite.
The weird part is that I’m not supposed to like this music.
More precisely, I’m not usually interested in singer-songwriters or in poppy rock music that depends heavily on lyrics. But I’ve become a Ritter fan anyhow. Thanks to my incessant introspection, I’ve frequently asked myself what’s so special about this fellow.
There’s no question that Ritter is an unusually gifted practitioner of his craft. He has a splendid ear for melody and arrangement, and he never pushes his pleasant but limited voice too far. His lyrics often focus on typical singer-songwriter fare—relationships, poetry’d-up reflection, and a handful of popular folk topics (So Runs features a song about Stagger Lee). Though his subject matter is familiar, he approaches them with wistful, beautifully controlled language. Lately, he’s taken to setting his tales in a bleak, unforgiving world, which I can (unsurprisingly) identify with.
These are all good reasons for a singer-songwriter fan to become a Josh Ritter fan. They are not, however, especially good reasons for me to become a Josh Ritter fan.
As good as Ritter is, I expect that there are many other contemporaneous artists in the same vein who achieve as highly and in much the same manner that he does. I don’t listen to them. I don’t even know who they are.
And I only gave Ritter a chance because of circumstance. My girlfriend introduced me to him a few years ago, and last spring we saw him and his band deliver an excellent live set (for free) in Philly. A few months later, she gave me his then-new album, and I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought if it weren’t for that live set and the chord the lyrics struck with me at that time. I probably wouldn’t have even heard of him if she and a few other friends hadn’t mentioned him to me, and yet his most recent album was a top-five release for me last year.
Avid music fans all secretly fear that somewhere out there is their new favorite record, and if they don’t look hard enough, they’ll never hear it. But at the end of the day, our album collections are like our friendships—they’re highly contingent on chance, circumstance, and serendipity. That fact may make us music dweebs uncomfortable, but it’s a good thing. We connect to music through the avenue of our own personal experience, and without the lens that experience provides, appreciating music would be a poorer thing.
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