May 13, 2006
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Something Good
Every time I hear the music segment on NPR’s 8:48 program, the host either features a band that is already one of my favorites (recently Morrissey and The Flaming Lips) or a band that I have never heard of before and love instantaneously (recently Antony and the Johnston’s and Josh Ritter).
Immediately after hearing Josh Ritter’s music on the program, I was splurging on his album, The Animal Years on iTunes and uploading it to my pod. So beautiful is this album that while listening to it on the crumby subway ride to work, I was transported to another, better place. Instead of standing cheek-to cheek with a Sterno-reeking homeless man, I was lounging barefoot, braless, and comfortable at a grassy summertime lawn concert, laughing with a group of my best friends. I was drifting aimlessly on an inner tube in the lake at my family cottage, minnows nibbling at my toes, a spine-split paperback shading my face.
The language on The Animal Years is thick with story and imagery. The music does not stray from the organic; nothing is over-produced or slick about the tracks. It is real. It is rust and dirt and terrible casseroles; it is a kind of home, nostalgic and comfortable with a hint of wist. On a number of the songs, Ritter weaves unexpected metaphors about wolves into the lyrics, a touch that forces the listener to buck up, to pay attention, to engage; like any work of truly good art, these songs refuse to be digested too easily.
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What have you been listening to lately?::Random Tangent::
Wolfin is something else that is good. It is a quarterly DVD of unseen short films that, for the most part, are engrossing and very cool.
Comments (2)
nice. i love a good music recommendation. lately i have been rocking herbie hancock. it’s like i discovered him all over again. i’m mystified.
I’ll have to check Ritter out. He sounds a little like James McMurtry (a personal favorite of mine, who happens to be Larry McMurtry’s son). “There’s a ghost of a moon in the afternoon / Bullet holes in the mailbox / Bullet holes in the mailbox, keyholes in my mind / Too long in the wasteland / Too long in the wasteland, I must have fallen behind.” Good stuff.I not only subscribed to Wolfin on your recommendation, but hooked up one of my co-workers who is a big-time indie movie buff. Thanks from both of us.