Josh Ritter 'The Animal Years' album

The V2 Records release of Josh Ritter’s forthcoming The Animal Years represents one of the key moments in an artistic career that discerning music critics expect to last for decades. The album is the follow-up to Ritter’s Hello Starling, which earned an extraordinary level of critical praise upon its independent release in 2003. Details magazine called Ritter “the best young songwriter we’ve got.” V2 gave the album a wider release—with a four-song live EP—earlier this year to still more acclaim. There is widespread anticipation for The Animal Years, his first full album created with the label. After hearing six tracks of it, Paste editor Josh Jackson wrote a feature describing it as “…an album that could very well be the best of 2006.” V2 releases The Animal Years April 4.

Ritter had the luxury to take his time and create the album with a producer he truly admired, Brian Deck, best known for Iron & Wine’s Our Endless Numbered Days and Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica. They recorded at Bear Creek Studios in Seattle and Engine Studios in Chicago. The new album’s 11 songs are lush in arrangement and rich in references. In an effort to make sense of today’s America, Ritter draws on a vast range of texts, from the letters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the historical fiction of Mark Twain.

The album’s riveting opening track, “Girl in the War” frames a discussion of the Iraq war and the divided state of the nation as an argument between St. Peter and St. Paul: “I’ve got a girl in the war, Paul, her eyes are like champagne/They sparkle, bubble over and in the morning all you’ve got is rain.” On perhaps the most audacious track ever recorded by Ritter, “Thin Blue Flame,” combines apocalyptic, gospel- like testifying with dreamy, stream of consciousness poetry. “Wolves” soars like an anthem, with a rich chorus and full orchestration, while the intimacy of “Idaho” relies primarily on Ritter’s vocals and a hint of acoustic guitar.
As his career gained all this momentum, Ritter continued touring. On numerous levels, The Animal Years is about the transformation—this period in his career, its historical context. Ritter admits, “…I was thinking back on the period of my life leading up to this record and my experience up to that point was, you get up, you start to play music and you tour. It’s such a strange life style. In a lot of ways I felt like I became this thing, half-man, half-animal, out in the middle of the country, playing. It was so bizarre. Everyone else is living their lives and doing things that are bit more normal …Man, after a year and a half on the road, sixteen months of touring for Hello Starling, I became the proto-hunter-gatherer, going out wherever and doing stuff and trying to find a way to make sense in a human way. But, really, in the end, you’re just trying to get food in your mouth. I think back on that time and feel definitely, those were my animal years.”

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Josh Ritter - The Animal Years