I get that not every album he puts out can be So Runs the World Away, but sheesh, it just seems like he keeps getting blander and blander with age. Still, there’s even less on this album overall that compels me to come back to it than there was on Fever Breaks.
The rare up-tempo track briefly perks my ears up here and there – “For Your Soul” is about as close to the wit and swagger of the Historical Conquests era as Ritter manages to get here, while “Strong Swimmer” is a nice little acoustic number that at least superficially catches my attention with its brisk finger-picking and happy-go-lucky melody. Several other tracks follow suit and are slow and spacious, seeming to take up a lot more real estate than they actually do within this album’s 37-minute runtime. “Sawgrass” is exactly the wrong opening move, with monotone spoken-word poetry recited over a slow-moving, hummed vocal hook that sounds like a reprise of a much more interesting and melodic song that didn’t make the cut. Now it just feels like the same-old, same-old “I’m a bedraggled underdog who doesn’t deserve your love but who really, really needs it” shtick, and I’m just not finding anything of lasting value there. I’m just not connecting with really any of these lyrics, which is troubling, given how profoundly he used to move me with a deftly woven tale like “The Temptation of Adam” or “The Curse”. This isn’t as interesting as when took more of a brash, live-band approach or played around with baroque arrangements back in his heyday, but it beats plain old acoustic guitar strumming, I guess. I feel like he’s going for something more moody and ambient this time around, which leads to interesting textures on a few tracks where he’s got some layered piano effects or electronic squelching sounds or whatever to add to his usual back-to-basics folk/rock color palette. I feel like he’s mostly been treading water for a couple albums now, with 2019’s Fever Breaks turning out to be a huge disappointment outside of the blunt-but-necessary protest song “All Some Kind of Dream”, and this album more or less follows suit. There was a time when I considered Josh Ritter to be one of the best damn songwriters alive.
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