A review: Josh Ritter Live in Cork

Last night, I was at the Josh Ritter gig in the Marquee in Cork and want to post a quick review. The Marquee is a large tent, and tonight was full of many people intent on having the usual euphoric experience that is one of this guy's gigs. Now, having got that dreadful pun out of my system, I will get to the review. I think the Marquee is a good venue for gigs because (a) it is around 10 times bigger than anywhere else Cork has to offer and (b) the sound is actually good for a large bloody circus tent. Over the years, I have seen great gigs by Nick Cave, the Flaming Lips and Antony and the Johnsons there. Tonight, it was Josh's turn.

First, we had Lisa Hannigan in support, whose album 'Sea sew' had never honestly done much for me, bar the wonderful 'Ocean and a rock'; the rest seemed somewhat theatrical and artificial to me, but live she was a much more intriguing prospect, with a great voice and an interestingly awkward and hence sympathetic demeanour (her Ian-Curtis-like marching on the spot dancing was quite unexpected); I am certainly inclined to give the album more listens now, and perhaps go and see her indoors in a much smaller venue, where she is said to thrive.

Then Josh himself came on and played from 8.55 to 10.40 or so, accompanied by the Corkestra (?!), a 24-piece orchestra plus his own normal touring band, with everyone very natty in suits and ties. This was maybe my sixth or seventh time to see him live, mostly in Cork, and he has always professed great fondness for Cork, which he nicely brought in by a short pre-first-song list of dates (plus who he supported, or who supported him, which was a very nice touch) of each gig he has done in Cork since first coming here with the Frames in 2001 or so.

This sort of leads to the main Josh conundrum; if he was not quite so utterly nice, would he be bigger in critical terms? I can never quite place him into a neat category, which I think is one of the problems. He is a very talented musician and song-writer who can write deep heavy songs ('Bone of song', 'Thin blue flame'), and whose music, despite his Irish links, remains as pure a case of Americana in its influences and references (his songs are scattered with American historical nods) as anything more traditionally classed as Americana, if not quite classifiable as alt-country. On the other hand, he smiles a lot and can seem to effortlessly throw off great pop songs in a way that most of his more serious contemporaries could or would not deign to do, and which seems to rule him out of the 'folk' crowd entirely. The question, so, is whether he would be taken more seriously if he had a more tortured air about him (like Lisa Hannigan's former partner in song), or whether he should ditch the serious side and crowd-surf into the arms ot teen pop acclaim. By refusing to choose either path, but to walk instead the fine line between, he remains an equally admirable and likable phenomenon, no mean feat.

In the Marquee gig, he brought a 24-piece orchestra with him. I saw him in Vicar Street in Dublin in December 2008 with (the same?) orchestral backing, and somehow the orchestration was more in-your-face on that occasion than last night (they seemed to sit out more songs at the Cork gig), perhaps because of physical distance from the stage; we were seated in the stands, as can be seen by the fairly crap video quality my N95 could manage on zoom, although the audio quality was as good as ever and the main reason for my uploading the clips here (think of the video clips perhaps as an impressionistic portrait of the gig, with blotchy pointillistic bursts of colour triggered by the impressive light show, a modern gig as it would perhaps be depicted by Monet, if he were making videos today). The set was fairly familiar from gigs of the last few years, although he did not start with 'Idaho' as he seems to often do. Highlights for me included a particularly wonderful version of 'The temptation of Adam', which is one of my favourite of his songs, mainly for the lyrics and the story they tell, which I absolutely love; a video clip follows:

'Kathleen' was predictably a crowd-pleasing sing-along and involved the conductor 'conducting' the audience (see below), as in Vicar Street (I actually put a clip of that song from that gig on a post a while ago here), while he did 'Bone of song' with a solo violinist, which was very cool.

Having an orchestra who can't easily get up and walk away kind of removes any slight air of mystery about whether there will be encores or not, and for the closing 'Empty hearts' he brought back on Lisa Hannigan and her band for a sort of mass sing-along celebratory ending, again contrasting with the sole intensity of some of his quieter stuff in a way which neatly encapsulated the enigmatic duality of Mr Ritter.

Two final thoughts:

1. I find really interesting the fact that he is currently deconstructing his songs in two completely different and diametrically opposing directions from their original band format. Zooming up the scale is the use of the orchestra live, but zooming down strips them back to solo acoustic versions of his first two albums (so far) which have been released in the last few months. These special editions, in very nicely packaged sets ('Hello starling' has just been released and the copy I bought last night was pre-autographed by the man himself - see opposite for the proof) feature the original album plus the solo version, and it is interesting to hear big big songs like 'Snow is gone' sounding as if recorded by the Scud Mountain Boys in a big echoey barn. Again, not something many of his contemporaries would do, and the experiment is all the more welcome for it.

2. He has made clear at several gigs in the last few years his issues with the Bush adminsitration, and took the opportunity last night (4th of July!) to indicate that he was far more content now, and marked the occasion with his own violin version of the 'Star Spangled Banner' (which he said was his first time playing violin on stage), ending in a very dramatic appearance by the star of the song itself. He did pretty good if I am any judge, but you can judge for yourself below.

p.s. my last post was about the new Wilco album; since that post, and until yesterday and my attempt to reacquaint myself with Lisa Hannigan, I have listened to nothing else. It gets better every time, and is definitely their best and my album of the year so far, by an incredibly long shot.