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At just under 30 minutes, Josh Ritter's EP is a curious and delightful collection of oddities first released back in August as a download only, an elliptical sort of follow up to his last album, The Animal Years. Ritter is a singer songwriter in the strong US tradition of Dylan and Springsteen, nowadays inevitably compared to the likes of Nick Drake, sometimes biting, sometimes tender, with a powerful way with words that's belied by his soft voice and use of casual idiom.
Girl In The War, the lead track from The Animal Years, is the gentlest of protest songs, Ritter's voice caressing the simple rhyme scheme which drives home key words. The music, slowly mounting with a gradually more insistent drum and Hammond organ in the background, has a certain majesty, the lyrics shot through with religious imagery (Peter sends an updated epistle to St Paul discussing the futility of belief during the Iraqi conflict) The final stanza, with its image of the girl in the war's eyes brimming over like an overfull glass of champagne which, bubbling over, turns to rain, is rather wonderful. There's also an acoustic version of the song at the end, but it lacks the power of the fully orchestrated version, along with two early versions of other Animal Years songs, In The Dark and the haunting whirlpool of words that is Monster Ballads.
The other three 'proper' tracks, Blame It On The Tetons, Harbortown and Peter Killed The Dragon (the first a pared down cover of a Modest Mouse song, the latter two versions of songs that appeared on the recent Lillian Egypt single), are plainly structured folk songs, with a bare guitar accompaniment, allowing the rich timbre of Ritter's voice to remain the focus.
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