Josh Ritter helps me through high violet withdrawal

Okay, last week I was high on violet, and now am down to earth because, just as the NYT gave, it has taken back. We were teased, tantalised, and excited, and now it is snatched back, held firmly in the grip of 4AD until May 11. Just enough to overwhet the appetite, and now back to waiting. Resorting to sad things like 'previewing all' in iTunes to get 30 second fixes of the songs. My Tweets this week have, I think, said it all. Anyway, back to the present, for now at least.

Music

The main non-National story for me has been Josh Ritter's 'So runs the world away'. I have previously posted at length about Josh and his music (see here and here), and I guess expressed a favourable but slightly ambiguous feeling towards him. The issue for me is a struggle between art and popularity, seriousness and goofy grins, throwaway pop and classic literate, almost poetic americana.

The good news is that, on this new one, he seems to have reached a new and happy equilibrium, and the pop bubbles of 'The historical conquests of Josh Ritter' (his last album) have given way to more grown-up and serious musical accompaniments, even if his lyrics are sometimes as funny and playful as ever. he has flirted with heavy serious in the past and done it rather well, as in 'Bone of song' or 'Thin blue flame', and the arrangements this time are mature and epic, yet melodic and accessible.

The old touchstones of Cohen an Dylan are still there, but joined, erhaps surprisingly, with a serious hint of Paul Simon on 'The lark'. Great tracks are 'Lantern', 'Southern Pacifica', and 'Folk bloodbath', which takes Nick Cave's entire 'Murder ballads' album and fits it into one gorgeous song. On a less favourable note (or set of dischordant notes) he has discovered his inner Tom Waits (the noisy kind, not the 'Martha' kind) on 'Rattling the chains' and 'The remnant', which I could do without.

A week after the album came out, we went to see him in Cork's Pavillion. It was, as ever, a ighly enjoyable good-natured gig by very talented musicians having so much fun it spilled over the audience. The last two times I have seen Josh he had the orchestra with him, which certainly seems to dampen his live spontaneity somewhat, it being understandably hard to go off on a tangent or experiment mid-song with 40 professionals trying to catch up, so he was looser with his regular touring band. His story-telling was maybe a little less evident than on occasion, and he seemed a little overly solicitous with the regular goofy declerations that 'this is great, right?' etc.

A full track-list for the gig was as follows:

Southern Pacifica/Change of time/Rumors/Rattling locks/The Curse/Right moves/Good man/Folk bloodbath/The lark/Long shadows/Monster Ballads/Mexican home (which I learned with a bit of digging is a John Prine cover)/In the dark/Me and Jiggs/Orbital/Harrisburg (featuring 'Wicked game' by Chris Isaaks instead of the usual 'Papa was a rolling stone')/Another new world/Lantern/To the dogs or whoever and then an encore of Moon River/Snow is gone/Wait for love.

That makes a long set (23 or so songs) with almost all the new album being aired, and I was impressed at how they recreated the complex sound of songs like 'Another new world' live. here was also a heavy emphasis on 'Historical conquests', but not regulars like 'Kathleen', 'Empty hearts' or 'Girl in the war'. The sound was good but the lighting, especially at the start, a bit mad. Besides Josh, Zak Hickman supplied most of the evening's personality, although the drumming by (is he Irish?) Liam Hurley deserves special mention, as does Sam Kassirer's keyboards. With their outfits and name (The Royal City Band) the band look as if they would be right at home as floating houseband on the riverboat on the cover of 'So runs the world away'.

As usual, I have a few clips from my trusty N95 and a good seat on the balcony (had trouble uploading to Blogger, so worked out how to upload to Youtube and then embed - a new experiment), and will start with 'Right moves', one of my favourites of the poppy ones on 'Conquests', as I always liked his vocal ups and downs on this, which give the song a lot of personality.

'Folk bloodbath' was also very good live, as seen below, and was followed by 'The lark', which was even more Paul Simon-y live than on record, as the evidence may show:

Starting with 'Monster ballads' he went solo for a few songs, and he started 'Me and Jiggs' thusly, in a very nice unusual version, before being rejoined by his accomplices mid-song, as seen below:

'Lantern' is definitely my favourite at this stage from the new album, and great live:

'Moon river' was an unusual start to the encores and during 'Snow is gone' he managed the not-to-be-underestimated feat of downing an entire pint of Murphys stout in one gulp and returning to song without an apparent breath (not to be tried at home), but the final 'Wait for love', a pretty inconsequential song on album, became a lovely closer mainly for the way the band (plus support Joe Pug) came together to sing at front of stage, their mutual affection and chemistry evident and rather touching:

All in all, a very good gig, as ever. Finally, under the music heading, I also went to eMusic for the first time in a while, and downloaded Joe Pug (supported Josh but didn't listen to much), Kissaway Trail (liked the sound of the first, although didn't listen too much, and the reviews of the new one were positive) and John Grant. Also, Cork band Boa Morte released their new CD, and I missed the launch (clashed with Mr Ritter), but will review the CD here soon.

Movies

Not much to report. Watched most of 'The time traveller's wife' until confusion gave way to sleep, blissfully. Nothing too exciting in the cinema either, but Screenclick has just posted me 'The taking of Pelham 123' (new version), so more about that next week.

Magazines

Uncut time, and a good-looking new American music CD, which I have yet to listen too, and High Violet happily made album of the month. Nothing else too interesting in reviews this month, although probably will check out LCD Soundsystem (I loved around half of 'Sound of silver', in particular 'Someone great'). Uncut also had a special stand-alone Springsteen magazine with old interviews and in-depth reviews of each album which I bought and am working my way happily through. I quite like these ultra-magnified specials on artists, depending on the artist of course!

Books

Finished 'The fight for English' by David Crystal; I am very interested in words and language, and was recommended this as a riposte to Lynne Truss' 'Eats, shoots and leaves', which I was always very fond of, and encapsulated much of what I feel about the modern abuse of everyday language. Must admit I still prefer Truss, but found Crystal clear (groan) and interesting.

Also currently reading 'Cheney' by Stephen Hayes on the iKindle (or whatever I should call it) and finding it absoultely fascinating, having a long-time fascination for the inner workings of the West Wing (particularly the series of that name); he has yet to turn into the prince of darkness (well, I have only got to the early 1980s - presumably he fights with Obi-Wan and falls into the volcano soon) and very interesting and well written so far. Finally, as I can never just have one book on the go, have also started 'Hunter of life's secrets', a biography of the great biologist Francic Crick by Robert Olby - dense and huge but I find this stuff fascinating, and am somewhat of an obsessive on Watson and Crick and DNA, having read almost every book written on the topic to date.

TV and media

Poor Jack is having a hard time on 24 (what's new?) but not much else to report this week. Found an interesting web-site on graphics and visualisations through the Sunday Tribune newspaper here. There is a beautiful graphic of timelines in science fiction movies and TV shows here, looking for all the world like particle tracks from the Large Hadron Collider.

On a final sad note, the Irish radio legend Gerry Ryan died this week suddenly, which is quite a shock. I remember seeing him in my university around 1989 and he gave a fantastic talk and was smart, honest, funny and likeable and I have some fond memories of his show when I should have been studying. A sad loss for Irish broadcasting, where he was a larger-than-life figure, smart, funny and brash.