By Nick Ubels (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 6, 2013
Moments of personal crisis can sometimes be as much a catalyst for unaffected creativity as they are tremendously trying. For Josh Ritter, that crisis came in the form of his recent divorce.
The Beast In Its Tracks is his response to not the fraught, tempestuous demise of a relationship, but the murky aftermath. From the opening notes of the track one, the brief and beautifully-lo fi “Third Arm”, Ritter finds himself pursuing someone who resembles his ex, but gives up when he realizes that “she didn’t have your eyes.”
He focuses on this moment of transition, the tenuous beginning of a new relationship as another fades away, as a guiding principle. Sharp pangs of memory interrupt the mending of Ritter’s freshly-broken heart and cause him to doubt his new love. Whether this is a true-to-life scenario or not is less important than the implications of this persistent juxtaposition to Ritter’s recovery process. The record is filled with this sort of quiet heartache as new and old romantic interests compete for his attention. Most of the songs address his ex-wife in the second person, focusing on getting over and moving on. His new partner abides patiently in the shadows as he tries on different narratives to help him understand and re-frame his expired relationship.
In true Josh Ritter fashion, he doesn’t dwell on bitterness, but pushes forward through his sadness with what this time amounts to a sort of hollow good humour. He mostly eschews the caustic bent that plague many similarly-themed records (see Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks or Beck’s Sea Change). Nevertheless, there are moments of vitriol that bleed through in his weakness, like the chilly “Nightmares” in which he calls out his ex-wife for being untrue or the gospel-inflected “The Appleblossom Rag” where he sings “I’m such a fool/ for things that sing/ so sweet and sad/ and are so goddamn cruel.” It’s a little startling to hear the clean-cut Ritter swear. The uncharacteristically foul-mouthed admission carries that much more weight for its unheralded arrival. Ultimately, through these phases and others (including the regressive reunion dream of “In Your Arms Again”), Ritter arrives at an optimistic conclusion, parting amicably on the late-album benediction “Joy To You Babe” in which he says farewell by way of a sincere wish for the best.
Musically, his previous records have married folk fundamentals and sweeping embellishments, but this album is muted and understated, complementing the rawness of the lyrical content. The instrumentation is mostly limited to voice and acoustic guitar, with occasional bursts of percussion and haunting, ambient organ sounds. This stripping away where there used to be dazzling arrangements reveals the disarmingly simple strength of Ritter’s song writing, both musically and lyrically.
When The Beast In Its Tracks was announced, Josh Ritter referred to these songs as “rocks in the shoe.” They’re not always pretty, but these hardened nuggets were clearly important for the 36-year-old to write and let go.
“Hopeful” is the most fully-realized arrangement here, but tellingly the weakest song. It ambles along with a clear-eyed country-folk step powered by a plodding snare drum like an outtake from Wilco’s hit-and-miss Sky Blue Sky that should have stayed off this record, too.
For all the imperfections and missteps which stem from its unyielding emotional honesty, The Beast In Its Tracks might be Ritter’s most gripping and convincing record to date.
