Ritter shakes himself out of a love funk on this triumphant rock-out of a return
Josh Ritter’s last album, 2013’s Beast in its Tracks, charted the end of his marriage to fellow musician Dawn Landes. Love, as the inestimable Neil Diamond once said, was on the rocks. Here Ritter bounces back like a boyish firebrand, reborn to sermonise on the rocks. It's a title with a double meaning because this is his rockiest work to date.
Across eight albums in 15 years, the prolific 38-year-old from Moscow Idaho often seemed overly eager to please but Sermon on The Rocks really does sound like he’s suiting himself. It’s adrenalized stuff that mixes it up with good-time rock `n’ roll, heartland rock, and folk. The Freewheeling Josh Ritter, anyone?
He’s at his most febrile and wild-eyed on Birds of The Meadow, a prowling apocalyptic tale full of foreboding Biblical imagery that works itself up into nervy funk (not a word you’d usually associate with Ritter). Young Moses takes a different tact on an infectious pop song full of gunning guitars and clattering drums. Ritter sounds half undone by it all and that's a very good thing.
His fine storytelling credentials are on show on Henrietta Indiana, a lamentation about a family ripped apart by alcohol and poverty. Elsewhere, he delivers a killer couplet on the heartland rock of Getting Ready To Get Down - “and when you get damned by the popular opinion/it’s just another damn of the damns not given”.
Honorary Irishman Ritter maintains something of Springsteen’s rust/dust belt passion and this is a sturdy addition to an impressive body of work. He’s got a real lightness of touch and a blazing heart when needs be.
Alan Corr
