“How refreshing and inspiring it is to encounter a young artist whose achievements match his ambitions.”—The Washington Post “The 10 Most Exciting Artists Now”—Entertainment Weekly
“100 Best Living Songwriters”—Paste Magazine
Named one of the "100 Greatest Living Songwriters" by Paste Magazine, Josh Ritter is certainly that. Sold out tours, amazing reviews, stellar albums and multiple radio hits have become the standard for this immensely talented artist and captivating performer.
Ritter’s last album, The Beast In Its Tracks, hit #22 on the Billboard 200 and #8 on the Top Rock Albums chart in 2013. In addition to this commercial success, the album continues to receive widespread critical praise—NPR Music calls it, “…gorgeous and glorious,” while Pitchfork asserts, “Beast is contemplative and forgiving, a means of burying one relationship to commit to another, and Ritter nicely evokes the excitement and resignation of such a transition.”
Of the record, Ritter says, “In the year after my marriage ended, I realized that I had more new songs than I’d ever had at one time. Far from the grand, sweeping feel of the songs on So Runs the World Away, these new songs felt like rocks in the shoe, hard little nuggets of whatever they were, be it spite, remorse, or happiness.”
Recorded during 2011-2012 at the Great North Sound Society in Parsonsfield, Maine, The Beast In Its Tracks continues Ritter’s longtime collaboration with producer and keyboard player Sam Kassirer. As Josh describes, “I hadn’t composed this stuff, I’d scrawled it down, just trying to keep ahead of the heartbreak. They needed to be recorded like that. We needed to work fast, make decisions quickly, keep the songs as spare as they could be kept, and above all never allow ourselves to blunt the sharp edges. Some of the songs were mean or evil. So be it.”
The new album follows Ritter’s 2010 release, So Runs The World Away, of which Bob Boilen from NPR declared, “I’ve come to expect good records from him...but this one took my breath away,” while the Boston Globe praised, “quite sensational…marks the finest music he has made.”
