duggup

While rummaging around on the NPR site I discovered an artist I had never heard of by the name of Josh Ritter. He puts on a great show but it’s his  words that get me, all theses words trying to get out and be heard.

You can find the concert about halfway down the page at NPR Music: Making Josh Ritter a Household Name Everywhere.

In an interview with NPR’s Alison Stewart, Ritter says that Animal Years was an exhausting exercise in precision. “I spent a lot of time on every little tiny bit, and getting lots of things just how I wanted them, because I wanted all the songs to fit together. And that sort of thing, you react to it by kind of wanting to blow something up, and punch a wall on occasion. And that’s sort of what I wanted this record to sound like. It was just having fun. It’s so much fun to play this stuff live. It’s just kind of wild music.”

The band just kills, but the song that really got me was, “Girl In The War” it’s from his 2006 album “The Animal Years” and it’s a heartbreaker. Josh may have found it an “exhausting exercise in precision” but it is on my shortlist for best song I have heard this year.

As you listen you can hear the influence of wordsmiths like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Leonard Cohen, and throw in an American storyteller like say, Mark Twain to round it out.

After all that, here is his really understated video from YouTube…

His websites are at www.joshritter.com/ and www.myspace.com/joshritter

thatch is fascinated by guitars, music, guitars, production, silly noises, guitars and used to be a musician. Did I mention the thing about the guitars?
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