Josh Ritter
05.04.06
Bowery Ballroom (New York)
words: Amy Wagner
photos: Nicole Szalewski

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On more than one occasion during Josh Ritter’s set, the indie hero was bathed in golden light giving him an almost god-like aura. It was appropriate. The folk singer/songwriter, Idaho’s most famous export since the potato, played with such calm and ease that it was almost as if he was completely unaware of the frenzy his two night sold-out stand at Bowery Ballroom caused.

Things got chaotic early in the night. As soon as openers Hem finished their gentle beautifully layered set, the push towards the front of the stage began. This was a show that people had traveled for and when I mean traveled, I don’t mean from another borough or a nearby coastal state. I mean I met people who flew in from places like California and Germany solely to see Josh Ritter.

Any time you have one of those “must travel for” shows, expectations reach vertigo-inducing heights. Ritter proved himself to be up to the challenge for the most part, playing a long set from an intimate living-room type set up which included an organ slanted across the stage with a nice Tiffany-esque lamp placed on top. Really kids, if you survived the crowd crunch and are still breathing, you can almost feel what it would be like to hang out in the hyped-up singer’s pad.

Ritter took the stage decked out in gentlemanly shades of black and gray. He quickly charged into “Girl In the War,” the first of many tunes from his new disc The Animal Years (V2 Records). After a few serious numbers, the mischievous side of the indie rocker came out to play the minute he let loose the first few chords of “Snow is Gone.” As he soared through lyrics like “Hello blackbird, hello starling,” Ritter oozed charisma and suddenly, it made sense that hordes of young women had clawed their way through the crowd to reach the stage.

The later half of the show could easily have been titled “Story Time with Josh Ritter” as the singer shared humorous tales about working at a luggage factory in teeny tiny Rhode Island. The song “Thin Blue Flame” - the song that a lot of people had name dropped earlier in the evening - got a welcoming round of applause, but it’s a difficult one to sell during a live show. Besides being epic in length (9 plus minutes), the song is heavy on dense lyrics that don’t have a melody to back them up. At times, Ritter even seemed to be gulping for air and struggling to get in every syllable.

By the time he closed his show, the hard-working rocker had earned the thundering hoots of approval that followed his exit. If Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst has the high school girls screeching, Ritter is bound to set their older sisters swooning.