Josh Ritter is an Idaho-born songwriter whose work is generally filed as Americana, a loose term suggesting some kind of authentic expression of working-class American life. On Sermon on the Rocks the term suits him well. He rattles through soul, honky-tonk country and Tom Waits-style confessionals in songs about people who, in a country as big as the US, can slip through the cracks, live unseen on the margins and get by on a combination of drinking, religion and mindless violence.
For the rollicking Getting Ready to Get Down Ritter tells the tale of a girl who has spent the past four years going to Bible school but hasn’t been quite as well behaved as her parents hoped, while Where the Night Goes is a classic portrait of small-town romance, complete with Friday night football and the local beauty “breaking hearts and not minding”.
By taking inspiration from the American heartland, Ritter is taking a road walked by Dylan, Springsteen and countless others, but his songwriting is so sharp, and his words so evocative, that Sermon on the Rocks is elevated out of its genre. It has the same transporting yet familiar feel as a short story by Carson McCullers or Flannery O’Connor. (Pytheas)