Josh Ritter

This isn't the same wide-eyed Dylanesque troubadour that gingerly offered up his last two sets of folk-pop. Josh Ritter's third album, The Animal Years, has guts. And it takes guts to make a passionate, sincere, no frills folk-rock album in 2006.

The album opens on a conversation between the apostles Peter and Paul. Peter mourns, "talking to God is like Laurel begging Hardy for a gun." "Girl in the War" lets listeners know that they are in for something bigger than they realized. Track ten, "Thin Blue Flame", is a ten minute epic that circles back to the sentiments of the opening track and pulls them into the album's centerpiece. It's an intense marching song with Pentecostal imagery as the soul of a man floats over the carnage of war and expresses feelings of fear, doubt, and anger.

But never fear, the album isn't all heavy numbers. And it never feels weighty, due to the fact that Ritter is not preaching at the listener. We are taking a journey with him, not forced to follow. The album has plenty of the lighter and softer pop moments that we've come to expect from Ritter. "Lillian Egypt" is an upbeat story about a fictitious silent film star. And "Good Man" is the most uplifting song you'll hear all year. Somehow Ritter is able to make all of these disparate themes and tones come together in an extremely cohesive album that flows and impacts. The entirety feels like a timeless overview of the human condition.

Ritter is an extremely sincere and literate songwriter who wears his heart and poetry journal on his sleeve. What I didn't sense on his first two albums that makes his new effort his strongest to date is his passion. There's not a sense of irony or copping out at any point on this album. Instead of employing sarcasm or misanthropic melancholia to tackle heavy topics, he faces them head on like a Cat Stevens or Van Morrison spiritual journey and comes out sounding like an obvious musical hero of his: Bruce Springsteen.

This is the kind of breakthrough album that an artist can really hang his hat on. It's not a breakthrough in that he's abandoning his former self. He's still a troubadour at heart, but he's added some passion and muscle. Ritter is a rare treat -- a real singer-songwriter. There aren't many of them in the 21st century. Real ones, at least. He wasn't created in a label boardroom and hasn't worked harder on his image than his songs. He isn't going to win over the ultra-hipster fickle indie rock crowd. He's too clean, too honest, and his music evokes thought and emotion. Many aren't comfortable with either. But if there's any justice, Josh Ritter will be a household name very soon. -- Doug Kamin

Idaho-bred singer/songwriter Josh Ritter's V2 Records debut follows in the footsteps of 2003's Hello Starling only in instrumentation. While he retains his literate tongue and expressive voice, there is far less humor on Animal Years than on his previous two outings. Producer Brian Deck (Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse) keeps Animal Years intimate but transient, like a circus train crawling through a small town on a busy Saturday afternoon. Essentially built around two startlingly affecting diatribes on the war in Iraq, Ritter utilizes the voices of Peter and Paul, as well as Laurel & Hardy, to eke some kind of explanation from both the Administration and the Creator. The first, the deceptively sweet-sounding "Girl in the War," threatens "The angels fly around in there, but we can't see them/I got a girl in the war, Paul I know that they can hear me yell/If they can't find a way to help her they can go to Hell." The second, "Thin Blue Flame," is a nearly ten-minute rant that follows the Velvet Underground "Heroin" arc of tinder to spark to full-on blaze in a way that hasn't worked for anyone in a long time, but most certainly does here. The other cuts never reach the same heights, but standouts such as "Wolves," with its sunrise gallop and "Whole of the Moon"-era Waterboys piano, and the languid "Monster Ballads" soar only inches beneath them. [A Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition of Animal Years was reissued in 2011 that included a bonus disc featuring Ritter performing the entire album acoustic. It also included four live B-sides, two videos, and new liner notes from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tom Ricks.] ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi