Album Review: Josh Ritter, "The Animal Years"

I've now reviewed and interviewed a lot of today's artists, but when I'm at home with my own music, I'm listening to albums that were recorded decades ago, like Neil Young's "Harvest," Led Zepplin's "Houses of the Holy," and a liberal smattering of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Billie Holiday (with some Lauryn Hill thrown in). So when I heard Josh Ritter's excellent album, I thought to myself, "Thank God, something new that sounds old enough for me to listen to." Ritter's album is such a great folk specimen that I'll just file it in right next to Johnny Cash and call it good. No wonder he debuted at #3 among the good people of Dublin. And he's practically my homeboy, hailing as he does from Idaho (I'm from Utah), so my basic thesis in this review, if you will, is that it's well past time for us to show him some Stateside love.

Ritter also came to record at WERS during Live Music Week (if I had known I would have gone to shake that man's hand), and you can read more about his intelligent views on life here in this article by Joshua Jenkins.