Pitchfork

On 2006's Brian Deck-produced The Animal Years, Idaho native Josh Ritter sounded ambitious, building studio texture and worldly disillusionment into his forceful, folk-weaned songcraft. But Ritter's then-label, V2 America, folded the same night he played one of the best of those songs, "Girl in the War", on "Late Show With David Letterman". Despite enthusiastic support from Stephen King and a proud few Pitchfork staffers, Ritter has apparently had enough of sounding ambitious.

"Rumors", from Ritter's forthcoming The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, relies on the reckless pulse of a Steinway upright piano-- an instrument Ritter doesn't really know how to play, but used to write much of the new album. First, though, come stabs of ornery guitar recalling Pulp's "Common People". An organ whirls into the bone-simple, oh-oh-oh chorus, but incomprehensible noises soon weave their drunken way between madcap horns and haunting orchestration. Or as Ritter puts it, double-tracked, in his American tall-tale vernacular: "The string section's screaming like horses in a barn burning up."

[from The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter; due 08/21/07 on Sony/BMG]