At the risk of "Over Ritter-ing" the blog, I'm going to review my man-crush's show from last Thursday. I was lucky enough to attend the show and when you do a music related blog, you kind of owe it to yourself and others to review a concert, even if you've just written another blog about this artist and your man-crush is starting to reach levels where people are worried. I promise in a day or so I will come down off this Ritter-binge I've been on and write about somebody else soon. I quit whenever I want, really I can...
Concerts from good musicians fall into 2 categories: "The Business Trip" or "Leave it all on the stage". Sadly, I've been to more than a few Business Trip concerts. You get it a lot with big bands in the middle of a long tour. They don't necessarily phone it in, but they don't really bring it either. They have a nice staple of 10-15 songs that they know backwards and forwards and they get on-stage and perform them really well. They're kind of on auto-pilot. It's hard to hold it against a band too much, if you think about it, it would really suck to go on tour and play the same songs over and over and over again for months. Business Trip performances aren't bad, they just make the second kind better.
Everyone has been to a show where you can just tell the guys on stage are genuinely excited to be there. As such, they adopt a sort of "We'll play all night if you don't stop us" attitude. There's more energy, more passion, there's jumping, solos, instrument smashing etc etc. It could be the town, it could be the songs just resonate more, or it could just be that someone is "on" that night, but for whatever reason, the artist leaves it all on the stage. (Note: Bruce Springsteen does this at almost every show) I'm happy to report, that Josh's performance at Variety Playhouse, was the latter.
For the record, no one has a better time at a Josh Ritter concert than Josh Ritter. From the moment he stepped on stage, he's like a kid on a playground, or a teenage girl at a Twilight movie, if that kid/girl was wearing a ridiculous white tuxedo... To be sure, this wasn't a show about fashion. The bass player was wearing a seersucker suit (with shorts) and argyle socks, and the guitarist had on a black fedora.
But fashion sense aside, it was all about the music. The show started off mellow with "Southern Pacific" which went right into "Change of Time". I was okay with the slow start, it kind of fit the mood. "Rumors" helped pick up the pace a little and "Rattlin' Locks" was pretty cool live. After listening to that song a few times and then seeing it live, I've learned to love the formless, jazz improvisational lyrical style of it. It works better as a live song than it does on the record. "Golden Age of Radio" was a golden oldie that I was happy to see Josh pull out. There were a lot of songs from "The Animal Years" which made me happy because it's probably my favorite. About midway through the set, the band left the stage and Josh played about 4 songs by himself (including a really good version of Bruce Springsteen's "The River", a real tearjerker of a song that might earn it's own blog!). Dawn Landes (who is Josh's wife according to the internet!) who opened the show (more on her later), came out and sang a duet with Josh for "In the Dark". During the song Josh asked the lighting guy to turn off all the lights in the room and then sang the song in pitch black.
It was a great show, a nice mix of old stuff and new material. The new songs meshed well with the old songs and I love that perhaps the loudest cheer of the night came when Josh said "This is a song about a mummy". Dawn Landes was a good opener too. It must suck to be the opening act. You're playing in front of a bunch of people who don't know any of your songs and didn't come to hear you. But she had a lot of energy, and some pretty good songs that were somewhere between up-tempo-Jewel and artsy-alternative-Sheryl-Crow. Variety Playhouse is a good venue too. I like smaller club gigs. Yeah, I know U2 has basically built a spaceship and is touring the world putting on mind-bending shows for 300,000 people. But I'd rather sit in a pitch black room, 50ft from my man crush and listen to him do a duet with his wife any day!
-- More music to come I promise! Especially with a new Black Keys AND Band of Horses record out. I need to clear some space in my brain to understand the series finale of Lost on Sunday. After that I promise to step it up with more variety. Thanks for reading!--
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