I nd the emergent to be particularly suppressed in the genre known loosely as “Americana,” and if a band is playing into this genre, it takes a lot to get my attention. Sufjan Stevens? Yawn.
Wilco, other than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot ? Double -yawn. But I like Josh Ritter.
I like Josh Ritter a lot . He’s just that good; the kind of songwriter that sweeps away the techno-conceptual apparatus from my listening habits and opens my ears to more time-worn, pithy expressions of truth. Put simply, Ritter is the most gifted interpreter of Americana, as an arranger and a lyricist, working today.
