JOSH RITTER: Beauty in Uncertainty

He’s been playing the songs live for some time, but only road-testing the new material in earnest now. In April, The Animal Years was tentatively slated for a September release, but on this wintry night Ritter says it will be in stores in April 2006. That’s the music biz. Delays are frustrating, but he’s relatively unfazed. “This is a chance for us to work on the songs without any pressure,” he says. “I’ve written a bunch of songs and we recorded them; now we’re learning how to play them. It’s great.”

Ritter hasn’t come to town empty-handed, though. On this co-headlining tour with The Frames, he’s offering a substantial glimpse into The Animal Years at the merchandise table with a CD-single of “Thin Blue Flame.” It’s easily the album’s most accomplished track. The nearly 10-minute elegy traverses such a broad landscape of religious turmoil that its true meaning remains intriguingly elusive. That was Ritter’s intention.

“The song doesn’t have to have a purpose,” he says, unscrewing a bottle of water. “It just has to have that fuel that pushes it forward and washes over. I was thinking about the conservative Christianity and the anti-Christianity movements swirling around and how they’re in a lot of way moot points. What is there except the people around you that you can help? I feel like everything’s missing the boat if we don’t remember that.

“The power of a song like ‘Thin Blue Flame’ is that it shouldn’t have a clear message. You can lose the beauty of words and emotion when things are clear. Trying to fit them all into a moral sometimes does the poetry and the music a disservice. I’m a songwriter. I’m a writer. That’s what I do. All I had room for were images. The idea was not to try and explain anything, just throw them out so fast that nothing can be explained.”

Both musically and lyrically, it’s the most dramatic departure for Ritter on The Animal Years. “He obviously jammed in more than any intelligent songwriter would do,” Baez says, “but it was on purpose. I like that. What I really like about that song is that I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and it’s totally unpredictable.”

“Thin Blue Flame” opens with two despondent guitar chords struggling for purchase on a melody, but it steadily rumbles to a boil. In the second act, Ritter sings:

I became a thin blue stream

The smoke between asleep and dreams

And in that clear blue undertow

I saw Royal City far below

Borders soft with refugees

Streets a’ swimming with amputees

It’s a Bible or bullet they put over your heart

It’s getting harder and harder to tell them apart

Days are nights and the nights are long

Beating hearts blossom into walking bombs

And those still looking in the clear blue sky for a sign

Get missiles from so high they might as well be divine

Now the dogs are howling at your door

Singing about vengeance like it’s joy of the Lord