Tracking down "So Runs the World Away" and Josh Ritter's continued brilliance

Today brings what will probably go down as my most anticipated album of the year.  The new effort from Josh Ritter, "So Runs the World Away," hit the shelves and I escaped my office to go track it down over lunch.  I learned a few things during my little lunchtime adventure: Best Buy hates Josh Ritter, Borders wins the award for store of the day, and Annapolis really needs a decent music store.  Anyway, I ended my adventure with a copy of the album in hand and I was soon richly rewarded for my struggles.

In short, Josh Ritter continues to be fantastic.  I've listened to the new album thrice already and will probably leave it in my car for at least the rest of the summer.

I first came across Ritter's music via a download of a handful of live tracks from a performance in Berlin (or some other European city I haven't been to).  I think I listened to "Girl in the War" about 20teen times that day (of course 20teen is a number...it means "a lot").  Soon after, I made my way to City Lights Records and got my hands on a copy of "The Animal Years" while noting that Greg already had the album poster mounted proudly to one of the few bare spots left on the store walls.  To this day, "The Animal Years" remains one of my favorite and most revisitable albums.

Shortly after my wife and I moved to Annpolis, we bought tickets to see Josh Ritter play at not-too-far-away the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA.  I think we can both agree that it was one of the best concert experiences of our lives.  Ritter's backing band was nothing more than a side table with a lamp and a water bottle on it.  He took the stage in his best Mark Twainesque white suit and proceeded to own the room for what could have been 2 hours or 2 years.  He really was that good.  There was a moment during that set that I think solidified his place in my just now made up Pantheon of songwriters.  He started into an - as of then - unreleased song, "The Temptation of Adam," with the audience eating up every word of his witty and literate storytelling (I believe every great singer/songwriter is just a storyteller that needed something to do with their hands and managed to find a suitable instrument) and then hit us with the WWIII line (see/hear below).  I'm not doing the experience justice with my meandering description here, but it was just a galvanizing moment in the crowd.  Not so much that it was a funny line that we all "got," but that we were all witnessing something truly unique and special and mostly unknown.  Sadly, Josh Ritter still seems mostly unknown, as shown by the fact that the store that is supposed to have new albums for sale every Tuesday seems to hat him (no Josh Ritter tab at all in the 'R' section and only 1 lonely copy of "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter" to show that the artist even exists).  I guess I'll really see how well known he has become in the years since I last saw him live, as my wife and I are catching him again this weekend in DC.  I may be setting the bar too high, but if the continued quality of his albums are any indication, the show should be a happy repeat of that last concert, but with a full band to complement Josh, instead of just a little table.

I could write for days about how much I enjoy Josh Ritter's music, but I'll just leave you with my current favorite of his, a little missle silo love story that I mentioned above.