Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Back in the mid-16th century, the arched entrance to Christchurch Cathedral’s crypt was nicknamed Hell on account of being presided over by a horned figure carved in black oak. This arched entrance area was leased to local entrepreneurs and lined with taverns, mostly frequented by professional folk from the nearby law courts. Above these houses of carousal were lodgings suitable for single men, advertised thus:
“To be let, furnished apartments in hell. N.B. they are well suited to a lawyer.”
Dante Alighieri might’ve approved, given that he consigned solicitors and their ilk to the lowest circles of his Inferno to rub shoulders with murderers, warmongers, suicides, sodomites, blasphemers, perverts, usurers, fraudsters, flatterers, simoniacs, alchemists, fortune tellers, falsifiers, evil impersonators, counterfeiters and false witnesses.
That venerable versifier might also have applauded the point in tonight’s set where Josh Ritter delivered a fevered reading of ‘Thin Blue Flame’ off the new album The Animal Years, with its rolling bolero beats and hallucinogenic couplets halfway between Rimbaud and Revelations, maybe the most tranced-out and visionary litany tune since Bob’s ‘Hard Rain’. The holy and austere surroundings only rendered the performance that much more powerful. It was certainly a lightning bolt moment for this listener, who hitherto always found himself torn between liking Mr Ritter and being exasperated at the transparency of his influences (Bruce, Leonard, Nick Drake, Townes Van Zandt).
It was, by anyone’s compass, a pretty remarkable night. He started low-key with ‘Idaho’, a coyote call of a song invoking the two JCs, (Johnny and Jesus), before easing into ‘Girl In The War’, a country rock dialogue between Peter and Paul. All credit to the men behind the wires – Christchurch’s vaulted ceiling and cavernous environs could’ve reduced the sound to murk, but in the case of band versus room, the band won on points.
It doesn’t hurt that Ritter himself is one of those guys who can take the asterisks out of s****r-s********r. ‘Snow Is Gone’ is of course an anthem by now, a song whose general drift is literally “hello birds/hello sky” yet stays just on the right side of the line that divides nature-boy hymn from hippy drivel. Similarly, ‘Kathleen’ is a lovely lilting half-sister to ‘So Long Marianne’. So, miracles a go-go: I went in a doubting Thomas and came out Damascus-ised. Mass is ended, go in peace.
Photography by Naomi McArdle