Josh Ritter

“The Animal Years”

(V2)

3.5 Stars



For better or for worse, Josh Ritter’s “The Animal Years” could just as easily have been released in the 1970s, if not earlier. He’s an adept, though plain, troubadour, who here treads the well-worn path of mostly-acoustic folk, fusing the singer/songwriter vibe with bluegrass and country-western.

In this release, Ritter has built solidly from the down home sound of his earlier albums, and he has effectively expanded his lyrical and musical creativity without losing his distinctively homespun sound. His rendition of mellow folk music is reminiscent of early Johnny Cash; his lyrics, like Nick Drake’s, are literate enough to be considered vaguely poetic on their own. However, Ritter has a voice so emotive that these lyrics can become incomprehensible to the casual listener.

One of the more Cash-like songs is “Good Man,” a romantic celebration of music, love, and open spaces that just misses the familiarity of older country rock-n-roll with the addition of a spacey synthesizer. Just after “Good Man,” Ritter touches on the traditional story of the wandering man’s bittersweet remorse in “Best for the Best.”

While the tracks here don’t deal exclusively with the stereotypical singer/songwriter subject matter, he is after all still a singer/songwriter: the disc is dominated by tales of music and love, sprinkled with religion, politics and literary references to Shakespeare, classic poetry, and the Bible.

Ritter also dashes in instrumentation unexpected for his genre, and with an impressive act of arrangement, it works well. The record-opener “Girl in the War” puts the mandolin to such use, while catchy “Wolves” follows up with guitar and piano, and “Monster Ballads” borrows a gospel feel with tasteful organ use. Ritter even allows the lyrics of “Idaho” to exist almost without accompaniment; he sings the soulful melody with just a hint of acoustic guitar.

Instead of forcing complicated riffs into the same airspace, Ritter opts to feature the distinctive sound of one or two instruments in each song. The music is allowed to laterally shift between styles with the smoothly rhythmic flow of Ritter’s poetic lyrics and wolfish voice.

The way Ritter lets his style meld with each new addition creates tracks that are simplistic and relatively shallow musically. Although each song on its own doesn’t contain layers of orchestration, the album manages to accomplish musical depth as an articulate whole that strings tracks together like mismatched beads. The sequencing of the album also helps it to cohere well, with upbeat numbers alternating with more subdued songs and rhythms.

Ritter’s gentle aesthetic is what makes this album listenable, but at the same time prevents it from being captivating. “The Animal Years” holds attention without demanding it, which qualifies the release as perfect homework music, if not truly compelling listening.