There seems to be more craft than soul in Josh Ritter's songs. An intelligent songwriter working in a vein previously mined by older artists from Bob Dylan to Randy Newman, Ritter remains so melodically and lyrically self-aware that his songs take on the character of literary endeavor rather than musical undertaking-- an approach that has earned him a rapid fan base. He places every word, renders every image, unspools every theme, and lays out every melody with superlatively efficient precision that the resulting songs-- including those on The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, his fifth studio album in eight years-- possess no defining blemishes or faults, no open wounds or emotional heft. There's a lot of smarts in his music, but little sense of spontaneity or discovery.
Perhaps aware of this academic distance or perhaps just aching for a new approach, Ritter chose to shake up his writing, arranging, and recording process on Historical Conquests. Writing melodies first and words later, he decamped to Maine with long-time collaborator Sam Kassirer and a new band, aiming to capture something more rough-and-tumble than his previous albums. That he did: Historical Conquests proves more rambunctiously immediate than any of its predecessors while retaining its smart arrangements. Ritter's vocals, especially on songs like opener "To the Dogs or Whoever" and "Mind's Eye", do sound looser and less practiced, as if he's trying to make every first take work. On "Rumors", he boasts that his "string section's screaming like horses in a barn burning up." It's an evocative image, but it never escapes the bounds of simile. His band sounds loud and insistent, but they never cut loose enough to make any of the songs actually sound like that.
There are some nice moments on Historical Conquests: Ritter can click off a great, even unexpected line-- like "I traded all the innocence I ever had for hesitation"-- whose meanings his audience must excavate over many listens. But these songs rarely sound lived in or personable; rather, they're more like museum dioramas where he can pose figures like Calamity Jane, Casey Jones, and Casey at the Bat in stiff tableaux. "To the Dogs or Whoever", which namedrops each of these American icons (and throws in Joan of Arc for good measure), could be an epilogue to a senior thesis. Ritter fares slightly better on love songs like "Right Moves", with its slick 1970s pop sheen, but the back-to-back sequencing of the too-similar "Still Beating" and "Empty Hearts", especially followed by a short, unnecessary reprise of "Wait for Love", clogs the second half of Historical Conquests, ending on an especially low note and making the album seem overlong.
To his credit, Ritter sees no difference here between folk artists like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and pop artists like Hall & Oates and Brian Wilson; in his eyes, all are important artists working in distinctly American idioms. But Ritter's combination of their styles and sound nevertheless comes across as overly safe-- closer to Fastball than anything with historical merit. As a result, he's often labeled MOR, but that name-calling, which extends to more indie-friendly acts like Feist, Cat Power, and even the National, might have more to do with MOR's self-legitimizing embrace of roots music than with anything inherent in Ritter's music. In actuality, his meticulous roots pop sounds rootless, taking a big-picture view of the country and its history but with no fixed perspective to lend his musings any specificity. His Americana is holistically, blandly American, which-- in an age when sprawl and box stores are edging out regional differences-- might suit the present cultural moment better than any of us would like to believe.
