After the release of Josh Ritter's critically acclaimed 2006 album, "The Animal Years," the Idaho-born musician's proclivity for meticulous, literary lyrics and immaculate folk-influenced arrangements garnered him a reputation as a master songwriter.
His fifth album headed in a different direction that Ritter will continue on tomorrow when he brings his sense of humor and literary lilt to the 9:30 club.
"'Animal Years' was a serious record talking about a lot of serious things, and the usefulness of what you can say wears off if you say it too many times," Ritter said. "To make another 'Animal Years' would be gratuitous."
With that in mind, he recorded "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter," his most spontaneous and organic album to date. Ritter's efforts to loosen up his style are apparent in the hard-rock feel of the album and its succinct lyrics.
Ritter made several major changes in his writing process for the album. For one, he chose to write many of the songs on the piano, an instrument he does not play.
"When you write on an instrument, you don't play," Ritter said. "You're not comfortable with the instrument and aware of the rules of what makes it music or not. You're just putting your fingers on it and seeing what happens. That was my first step in cutting loose during the recording. I thought, what's something different I can do? Play the piano? Harmonically and rhythmically, it's different."
Writing the music for "Historical Conquests" before the lyrics, makes the shorter, more instrumental songs a sharp contrast to the verbosity of "The Animal Years."
"I would record a song and then have to rewrite the lyrics about eight times," Ritter said. "I loved it, though."
"To The Dogs Or Whoever," the new album's rollicking first track, is reminiscent of 2003's "Hello Starling," but otherwise starts off the album on a different foot.
"Mind's Eye" is nothing like his usual sound. The swaggering song sounds more like Spoon's funky, minimalistic piano-rock jams than anything previously seen from Ritter.
"I was definitely listening to something a bit more bad-ass during the recording of this album," Ritter said. "I listened to a lot of hip-hop. There's so many really incredible funny but bad-ass hip-hop lyrics, and there's always a bit of a wink behind the craziest ones."
Although "Historical Conquests" is a fresh effort from Ritter, he hasn't completely severed ties with his previous body of work. The thoughtful, literary Ritter is still apparent on "The Temptation Of Adam," the anxious, yearning love story of two people sheltering in a missile silo during the Second World War.
His humorous side comes out on "The Next To The Last Romantic," a mocking ode to a traveling heartthrob.
"I was really thinking of the cowboy romantic in kind of the same way as a musician going around like that, a musician with a huge inflated sense of ego," Ritter said. "I think that's one of the reasons why the cowboy image is so appealing to me - because it feels like a musician's life in some way. I thought it would be funny to write a song about some guy who has a huge ego but deep down has this soft spot."
Opener Old School Freight Train will warm up the crowd tomorrow night.
