“The Curse”
from the album So Runs the World Away
2010
iTunes
Idaho native and Brooklyn transplant Josh Ritter hits a beautiful stride on his sixth album, a soulful combination of conversational folk ballads and powerful gut punches. Ritter’s the kind of artist that will always draw comparisons to legends like Bob Dylan and contemporaries like Ryan Adams — and while So Runs the World Away contains a handful of songs that make those comparisons easy, he also sounds very much like himself and never sways from his unmistakable cadence.
He whispers on “The Curse,” stomps on “The Remnant,” and, yes, matter-of-factly evokes Dylan on “Folk Bloodbath” when he explains with scratchy sincerity, “That’s the sad thing with life / There’s people always leavin’ just as other folks arrive.” He’s not the only one channeling the greats, but he does it better than almost anyone else today.