On Spectral Lines, a cartographer of the strange and fantastical traverses more familiar territory, patiently seeking glimmers of magic in the mundane.
There are few people who could use the words “brindled” and “bergamot” in a song and get away with it. Josh Ritter is one of them. The Idaho native has always been a wordsmith and storyteller at heart. Not only has he published two novels (2011’s Bright’s Passage and 2021’s The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All), but his songs have always sounded more novelistic than most contemporary folk songs, brimming with wordplay, literary allusions, and historical references. This all makes sense when you consider his undergraduate major at Oberlin College: “American History Through Narrative Folk Music.” As one of the Americana music scene’s most revered poets, Ritter could easily rest on his laurels. However, his newest album ventures into uncharted territory, challenging sonic and lyrical boundaries in its quest for things luminous and universal.
Spectral Lines, which dropped on April 28, 2023, is Ritter’s eleventh studio album. It’s also his most unique. While the instrumentation is familiar, the arrangements are more ethereal and atmospheric than anything Ritter has produced before. Announcing the album on Instagram, Ritter described it as a musical leap forward: “I wanted to make a record that looked outward, following close on the heels of time as it traveled forward, looking toward the future, rather than backward at the record of things past. The songs on Spectral Lines float through all kinds of sonic environments… The signal that the lyrics beam out is composed of Light, in the spectrums of Imminence and Resolve and Love.” The description is an apt one. The album’s tracks are luminescent, awash with shimmering guitar riffs, sparkling piano flourishes, and warm harmonies. Ritter’s Royal City Band has always pushed the musical envelope, reveling in exotic sounds and layered production. Here, they drift into the background, eschewing clutter and giving Ritter’s melodies room to breathe. The results are stunning: each song feels like an open space to get lost in.
The experimentation doesn’t stop there. Ritter weaves a tapestry with seamless transitions, allowing each song to bleed into the next. In a recent interview with NPR, the songwriter revealed that several of these transitions incorporate field recordings captured on his phone over the course of a decade. The audio clips – which include swings, birdsong, cathedral bells, and the winds of Mars – underscore the album’s preoccupation with movement and flight. They’re also a tribute to Ritter’s mother, a neuroscientist who died in March of 2021. Describing the recordings to NPR, Ritter said, “They were all things that reminded me of Mom, in some way. I don’t know why.” Like the album’s instrumentation, these sounds evoke particular landscapes, lending the songs an expansive, tactile feel.
If there’s anything to criticize about Spectral Lines, it might be its lyrical simplicity. Fans of Ritter’s past work (myself included) love its verbosity – the endless alliterations and assonances and internal rhymes, the sense that the songwriter can’t help but pack as many beautiful words into each line as possible. Ritter is fond of grand narratives, a bent exemplified by his celebrated albums The Animal Years and So Runs the World Away (The latter is a personal favorite which I revisit every year around Halloween: How many albums do you know that include songs about sabertooth bones, polar expeditions, gunslinger murders, and a mummy who falls in love with an archaeologist?) By contrast, the lyrics on Spectral Lines are more subdued. Yet, this simplicity complements the soft grace of the music. It also makes thematic sense. The songs on this album deal with intimate concerns: family and community, aging and mortality, love and loss and longing for connection. On Spectral Lines, a cartographer of the strange and fantastical traverses more familiar territory, patiently seeking glimmers of magic in the mundane.
To characterize the songs as simple is not to label them cliché. There’s plenty of strangeness to appreciate here. The album’s opener, “Sawgrass,” features a spoken poem reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s early work, charting an interstellar quest for belonging. “Black Crown” examines the intersection of depression and creativity through a patchwork of dreamlike fragments (and uses the words “brindled” and “bergamot” in close succession). “Whatever Burns Will Burn” sounds eerie and ancient, grappling with the inevitability of change. In his interview with NPR, Ritter depicted the harmonies on “Any Way They Come” as a “ghostly barbershop quartet.” Additionally, there’s plenty of gorgeous poetry here. In the second verse of “Horse No Rider,” Ritter asks, “What is love anyway but the prettiest bird singing such a bitter song?” In the album’s standout track, “Strong Swimmer,” Ritter mines inspiration from a seaside scene in Shakespeare’s King Lear, meditating on the struggle of entrusting a child to the world:
Now I’m standing on the cliffs
And cold sea is far below
And the birds that float the midway air
Like driven flakes of snow
I cannot go where you are going
I can no longer fight those waves
Still I’ll watch you ’til you’re out of sight
A strong swimmer all the way
Towards the end of the album, Ritter expresses gratitude for a partner with these straightforward, remarkable lines:
I got a pure heart
I am not wise
But everybody gets lucky hits the nail on the head
And gets it right sometimes
And you are my sometime
For all the light scattered across this album, Ritter is no stranger to the darkness. Here, as on past albums, he reckons with the inescapability of death, the entropy that grinds all things down, and the destructive potential of humanity. Nevertheless, he remains convinced that hope, beauty, and intimacy are worth fighting for, all the more precious for their fragile and fleeting nature. On “For Your Soul,” he enjoins listeners to accept the reality that life is struggle: “There’s a battle that rages / You can’t wish it away / You’ll have to fight for your love.” On the back half of “Any Way They Come,” he refutes the notion that life’s brevity renders it meaningless:
I came here with nothing
I’ll be gone before long
Tell me, whatever’s left
Of the breath of a song?
But if that’s all there is
It’s more than enough
And it wasn’t for nothing
I gave it all of my love
On the album’s closing track, “Someday,” Ritter urges listeners to fight universal forces of decay with connection:
The dark is too hungry
Nothing’s ever quite enough
So throw your arms
Round the whole world
And the ones you love
The song’s chorus is yearning and hopeful in equal measure: “Someday, there’s gonna be justice / Will it be today?”
Listening through Spectral Lines for the first time, I was underwhelmed. I had hoped for more of the bold production and dense, dazzling wordplay that I’d come to expect from Ritter’s work. It took a second listen for the songs to work their magic. The album may not achieve the musical and lyrical heights of The Animal Years and So Runs the World Away, but I’m grateful for Ritter’s willingness to lean into the intimate and the universal, to create sonic spaces that invite introspection and revelation. In these dark and difficult times, we could all use a bit more light, and the tales Ritter unfolds on this new project have a peculiarly arresting glow.
Words for Wayfarers 