Josh Ritter owns his music. He inhabits it. He rides over it like open pasture land, singing about lost loves and broken hearts. He hijacks it like an outlaw would a rollicking locomotive, wailing the confident threats of youth and laughing out the triumphs of a faster gun. He ends every evening around a campfire with an ever growing band of followers, like a modern day Billy the Kid, sparkle in his eye, sharing stories of past friends and enemies, long dead, with such clarity and enthusiasm that you feel you know them. You feel you understand them. You begin to question if maybe they aren't really all Josh Ritter himself. But before you can find any crack or flaw in his marbleized persona, he is gone again, jumping off cliffs into rivers and sliding under fences in pursuit of a girl. He runs barefoot with the confidence of a child that doesn't know what it means to trip, and with his fourth and grandest album yet he historically proves it very well might never happen.
(This is a review James did for metacritic.com. Just a sample of why James is a 10x better writer than I am. I also thought that people looking might enjoy an introduction to a talented musician and a new album.)
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