I feel like Josh Ritter is in a tough spot – he seems stuck between the indie taste-maker world of Pitchfork and the easy-listening adult contemporary crowd of WFUV. At least he’s a huge star in Ireland.
Whatever the case, he has put out a bunch of solid albums this decade, none of them breaking any real new ground, but all very solid in the rootsy folk singer-songwriting genre. Lovers of Joanna Newsome, Devendra Banhart or Smog might find Ritter a little too safe for their ears, but I don’t buy into that. Ritter is what he is and he does it quite well. He rarely blows the mind, but he’s tuneful, a good songwriter and a solid lyricist. “Girl In The War”, for example, is a fantastic song, a perfect example of what he does so well.
“Me and Jiggs” follows Ritter’s template to a tee, but it packs a late-night lack of cohesion that some of his other songs maybe lack a little bit. We love this song because we love singing Townes Van Zandt and painting our names on the water towers and all the other things that Ritter makes sound so fucking enticing after drinking 10 Harpoon IPAs on a front porch in Shaftsbury, Vermont. (Grave apologies to Robert Frost. It wasn’t you, it was me).
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