JOSH RITTER

EARNEST, ERUDITE, DREAMY, AND minutely detailed when it comes to filling his shortsong stories and long-form novels with the sort of not-so-grounded, lonely inquisitive characters and twinkling, true-to-life moments that would make John Dos Passos’ The 42nd Parallel seem spare, Josh Ritter is a writer who puts the work in. Rolls it around, then deconstructs and remasters it all into something elegant and alarmingly neo-real.

Ritter has done this through two winning novels, Bright’s Passage and The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All, as well as ten starry albums before this spring’s Spectral Lines—and a tour that will bring him to Glenside’s Keswick Theatre on May 18 with his Royal City Band. Talking from Oslo, Norway, Ritter didn’t make it all seem easy—honestly, he made writing sound the intricate, passionate, confounding work and wonder that it all truly is.

A.D. Amorosi: Before I touch Spectral Lines, it is crucial to note that you have a weird, 21-year-old+ history with the Philadelphia area, what with having recorded your second album, The Golden Age of Radio here. How did you get here, to begin with, and what impression did Philly leave on your second album?

Josh Ritter: I have amazing memories of that moment. We were in North Philly at SoundGun on N. American Street, with this really cool guy, Bill Moriarty. He was a young kid getting started, somebody we’d heard about along the way—super friendly, my age, and had a studio. He was willing to work late nights when it wasn’t that expensive. Bill really went out on a limb for us. And I remember us recording there on a Sunday and someone setting fire to a car on the street outside the studio.

A.D. Amorosi: Yeah, you were in Philly.

Josh Ritter: All of the black smoke from the flames was coming into the studio. I was in the middle of a take on “Harrisburg,” and

Bill kept motioning for me to keep singing through the smoke. That was a truly fundamental moment in my recording history. I realized then my true essence is coming through this microphone, just as is the essence of this place, this moment, and the situation. And I was just going to let it all come through, and maybe people will pick up on that whole picture.

“WHEN I WROTE BOTH OF MY NOVELS, I BELIEVE I WAS HEARING A VOICE. WHAT WAS THE ANGEL SAYING TO MY MAIN CHARACTER, A LACONIC, INWARD, PERPETUALLY CONFUSED PERSON WHOSE THOUGHTS WERE LESS IMPORTANT THAN HIS ANGEL’S? IN THE SECOND NOVEL, I HAD THIS IMAGE OF AN OLD MAN IN A BAR JUST TALKING —UNTIL, AFTER A TIME, I REALIZED THAT HE WAS TALKING TO ME.“

A.D. Amorosi: In the same way that you were open to experiencing the moment as a performer, is that true of your songwritin, toog? You seem to be a workmanlike pragmatic writer who uses what he’s got when he has it—someone less than precious about his writing.

Josh Ritter: Songwriting is a little bit like remote viewing. You sit there. You close your eyes, relax, and dilate this muscle in the middle of your head—an iris that is opening and closing. You open it up, and ideas come through. The process is mystical and beautiful. But I also realized that just because it comes to me doesn’t mean it will translate to anybody else. That’s where the actual songwriting comes in. Because unless I’m saying things clearly, I’m wasting my moment. So, the images have to be clear, the song's structure has to be solid, and I have to let the water flow into the container that holds it all, the writing. Where it comes from, though is a beautiful mystery. And I can’t share that unadulterated mystery. I have to massage it, get it into shape.

A.D. Amorosi: Eyeballs. Water. Mystery. Massage. Got it. Now, would you say that THAT is true of your more long-form writing, your novels?

Josh Ritter: It has shorter bursts, definitely. I’m not going to say that it is the hardest thing ever, but writing, or being in a writing space, takes a lot of energy.

A.D. Amorosi: It’s not for the faint of heart.

Josh Ritter: Your brain works so hard, whether in a shorter thing such as a song or stretching it out for the trance-like aspects of writing a novel. That’s much more difficult. You have to be patient, learn the pitfalls. You learn about stepping away, figuring out that someone wasn’t saying this or doing that

A.D. Amorosi: Simplifying the themes of your novels for the sake of a question, what do you believe that writing about a man with an angel (Bright’s Passage) and writing about the adventures of a lumberjack (Great Glorious) portrays of your trajectory as a writer? Is there a throughline?

Josh Ritter: Yeah. When I wrote both of my novels, I believe I was hearing a voice. What was the angel saying to my main character, a laconic, inward, perpetually confused person whose thoughts were less important than his angel’s? In the second novel, I had this image of an old man in a bar just talking —until, after a time, I realized that he was talking to me. I learned to write down the things he was saying to me and how he said

CONTINUED ON PAGE 30 chestrates it all into an energizing city symphony both humorous and devastating. (Streaming on HBOMax.)

Body Heat (1981, Lawrence Kasdan, United States)

Kathleen Turner shot to stardom as Matty Walker, the South Florida femme fatale who makes not-so-bright lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) the fall guy in the murder of her wealthy husband (Richard Crenna). Writer-director Lawrence Kasdan uses the film noirs of old (Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity is an evident influence) as his template, all while upping the sexual explicitness in keeping with the more permissive nature of moviemaking in the 1970s through the was). He was flying solo that evening too, and we compared the contents of our baskets, which weren’t all that different. We spent a few minutes on guy talk, and then we discussed meat—the Piedmont ribeyes in the butcher case in particular, of which David is a fan. I brought one home. It’s still unclear to me if Piedmont is a farm, a breed, or a location. Regardless, it merits its own tray in the case and a price to be proud of. there is a challenge to painting meat. It’s one thing to create an image that people can tell is a steak and another to capture the anticipated aroma, sizzle, and flavor—or look in the other direction and reflect on where it comes from. There is a color that is specific to raw meat. Not just any red, but hemoglobin red. And it changes with the cut, the breed, the age. With a ribeye, that color is slightly darker in the cap. The fat is translucent off-white, and its dense texture lends a cleaner, smoother cut. It is usually stained red from the meat portion. This steak has nice marbling and something else I look for: a consistent thickness, which will assist in even cooking. early1980s. Given the locale, the sweat is prevalent whether people are in or out of the sheets, though it’s the lustful pas de deux between Matty and Ned (complete with a rather forthright groin grab) that really turn up the, ahem, heat. Turner clearly relishes the role of black widow, and she’s perfectly matched with Hurt who makes his character’s hot-blooded naïveté both riotously comic and affectingly tragic. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.)

Anyone familiar with my work is not surprised that I painted the steak. It’s part of our era, culture, and artistic tradition. But mea culpa; it’s also part of my diet. I ate it, and David was right. Delicious.

As I say to the point of tedium, I’m painting my encounters, which are highly personal moments between everything that has come before, and what will happen after. The experiences are mine, but they are similar to those of other people. The parts we have in common form a language.

I don’t paint something without really looking at it. In the process, I often learn more than I could include in the image, but that’s not what I’m after. The idea is to find that common language.

Ghost in the Shell (1995, Mamoru Oshii, Japan/United Kingdom)

A key crossover anime feature, director Mamoru Oshii and screenwriter Kazunori Itō’s adaptation of the popular cyberpunk manga by Masamune Shirow manages a sublime mix of the effortlessly cool and the headily philosophical. Motoko Kusanagi, nickname “The Major,” is a team leader for a secret police force known as Section 9. She and her compatriots watch over a brave new world in which most human bodies are augmented, if not fully replaced by, mechanical parts. The “ghost” of the title refers to the spirit/consciousness inhabiting this enhanced “shell” of flesh. The Major herself is questioning her own humanity, an internal struggle that comes to an external head when Section 9 goes up against a mysterious villain known as The Puppet Master. All the expected anime touches are here — the lithe female bodies, the chic bursts of violence — but Oshii and his collaborators turn such base pleasures (as the iconic opening scene illustrates) literally on their head. You’ll feel as energized intellectually as you do sensorially. And afterward you should immediately check out Oshii’s equally spectacular and even more challenging sequel Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2. (Streaming on MUBI.) n

Using my own past experiences, desires, and fears as a reference, or perhaps being unable to avoid them, I eliminate elements that detract from how I understand the subject and enhance those that are at the core of its identity, making it more like itself than it is. Much like storytelling, where the journey amplifies the message.

That brings us to the background. Things naturally come with a background, and that context makes a huge difference. With a background, much more of their identity is revealed. I kept the steak on its supermarket butcher paper. I could have depicted it on a plate or a carving board with a knife (I’ve got a great cleaver), but styling would move it away from the basic truth I was chasing, which includes its origin. The meat hasn’t been washed. There are red smears on the paper. It’s just as it was when I unwrapped it.

That link to place in time is something about the encounter I try to maintain, or at least not lose, as I build a painting. I might take a walk-around to determine what views best describe the heart of the subject, but I don’t want it to become a new story as much as a continued story, learning more in the doing, built on what I bring with me.

It was that way with the steak. Scrolling back, my conversation with David brought it to my attention. But before that, there are all those pieces of my past life, including cows observed in fields and barns, butcher shops visited, and meals cooked, that give meaning and context to the ribeye on my counter, wrapped up all nice and marketlike.

You don’t see the “before” part, but you get to employ your recollection when responding to the painting. This image is more than the salivations of a carnivorous artist. It’s a contemplation of the cow. n was the highest of low art. This helps distract from Reeves’ odd awkwardness in the role. Shorn of his preternaturally goofball endearments, he gloomily galumphs his way through a number of well-filmed actions scenes, which in their excess (see the Paris-set tumbling stairway climax) tend to the flesh-abusingly repetitive. The once and forever Ted du), trying to make ends meet in a European country ruled by impersonal bureaucracies, both official and unofficial. Tori has his resettlement papers. Lokita, who is pretending to be Tori’s older sister, does not. That’s the driving force behind the duo’s turn to petty crime, first as drug mules, and then, in Lokita’s case, as an effective slave in a marijuana hothouse. Both characters’ spirits and bodies are exploited and abused. The arc of the story is bleak without ever being especially discomforting, though as always with the Dardennes, the craft is acrossthe-board impeccable. Yet the transcendent moments of their best work feel at a distance here — perhaps by design, but sadly to the detriment of the overall project. [N/R] HHH1/2

Personality Crisis: One Night Only (Dirs. Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi). Documentary. A man of many faces? Or just one visage that life has etched more magnificently than most? Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s divine portrait of New York Dolls frontman David Jo-

“Theodore” Logan is additionally shown up by co-lead Donnie Yen as Caine, a blind assassin whose allegiances shift as elegantly as his mesmerizing martial artistry. Too often you wish the movie was only about him. [R] HH1/2

Tori and Lokita (Dirs. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne). Starring: Pablo Schils, Joely Mbundu, Alban Ukaj. The very talented Belgian brother act behind such spiritual-realist classics as The Son and Two Days, One Night return with one of their grimmest sits, a tale of two African immigrants, Tori (Pablo Schils) and Lokita (Joely Mbun- hansen interweaves footage from all eras of the gravel-voiced singer’s career, most of it from a gorgeously photographed (by the great Ellen Kuras) set at Cafe Carlyle in Manhattan in January 2020, right before the COVID-19 shutdown. The impending pandemic is mentioned only twice — once by Johansen in a months-later interview, the second via an end credits title card. But it informs the documentary’s overall thesis that there’s a strange cohesion to Johansen’s chameleonic metamorphoses from band’s band punk legend (a teenage Morrissey was even president of the NY Dolls fan club) to one-hit-wonder pop star (in the form of “Hot Hot Hot” crooner Buster Poindexter) to nichey Rock-’n’Roll elder statesman. Epochal shifts in the culture only fortify Johansen’s unique artistic abilities. No micro or macro societal changes can upend this master craftsman from pursuing his calling, and, as the film so sublimely attests, we’re all the better for it. [N/R] HHHH n

VALLEY / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12 a winner. An oasis in a gritty commercial/industrial maze, Coca-Cola Park offers a ton of fun: picnic patios; a tiki-bar terrace; a grassy hillock for lounging; a giant soda bottle that spurts fireworks after home-team home runs. Creative promotions run rampant; this month’s added attractions include Mother’s Day fireworks and Kentucky Derby Day mint juleps. The menu is a brimming banquet of brisket bowls, pepperoni pizza pretzels, cheese curds and pig products galore (i.e., bacon cannoli). Visitors enjoy $9 general admission, $5 parking, free admission for leashed dogs on Tuesdays, and rehab assignments from major-league heroes like Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper, who last year created a sensation by mashing two homers against the Gwinnett Stripers, an Atlanta Braves affiliate. No wonder the IronPigs have led the entire minor leagues in attendance, averaging 9,000-odd bodies in a stadium with 8,278 seats and a merchandise store with a foul ball caught and signed by musician John Mayer. (1050 IronPigs Way, off Union Boulevard, Allentown; 610-841-PIGS; ironpigsbaseball.com)

Loretta O’Sullivan has played cello in Royal Albert Hall, accompanied silent movies, and launched an ensemble that commissions

Orchestra and the resident artist of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem’s 115th festival. She’ll solo in concertos by Vivaldi and C.P.E. Bach, Johann Sebastian’s son. Other festive highlights include the local premiere of a newly discovered J.S. cantata and the streaming of the Mass in B Minor, the cornerstone of America’s oldest Bach choir. (May 12-13 and May 19-20, various venues in Bethlehem; 610-866-4382; bach.org)

ArtsQuest is an entertainment octopus with tentacles curled around a Christmas tent and an ice-skating rink, an avant-garde pavilion and an indoor café with a two-story window overlooking Bethlehem Steel’s mighty blast furnaces. Long bound to Bethlehem, the nonprofit has added an Allentown park as a satellite, a wide-open preserve harkening back to Musikfest’s beginnings as a big pastoral picnic. The inaugural bill on May 12 showcases Face 2 Face, with Mike Santoro and Ronnie Smith recreating the Billy Joel-Elton John tours by playing everything from Scenes from an Italian Restaurant to Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding. May 13 is devoted to the Ultimate Doors, with a Jim Morrison look- and sound-alike toasting “L.A. Woman,” and Splintered Sunlight, which has been resurrecting Grateful Dead numbers for a quarter century. Bring blankets and chairs, on which you can eat such food truck fare as pizza, tacos and designer ice cream. Your leashed dogs can eat and howl along. (Grange Park, 360 Grange Rd., Allentown; 610-3321300; artsquest.org)

John Ahlin is a master comic actor who can stop the show with a nod or a wink, a pelvic thrust or a triple take. Burly of body and beard, voice and manner, he’s more than a match for Sir John Falstaff, Shakespeare’s perennially soused, merrily bombastic, profoundly melancholy sidekick to Prince Hal/King Henry. Ahlin reunites with his theatrical alter ego in Henry IV, Part II, which opens the 32nd season of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, which he’s served nobly as a kind of resident clown/king. He’ll join his colleagues in a bare-bones production they’ll choreograph, outfit and prop up. Other festive highlights include a Billie Holiday cabaret musical and The Tempest , Shakespeare’s magical farewell, directed by retiring PSF co-founder Dennis Razze, a musical specialist and an all-around swell fellow.

CITY / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12 val, the Kensington Derby & Arts Festival, Spring Fest 2023 in Roxborough, and the 2023 Ardmore Outdoor Beer Fest—all of these things happen in May. Holster up. Only May 18’s 5th Annual Festival of the Peony at Styer’s Peonies sounds like you won’t need a gun for your safety. How about mace, though. Think about it. contemporary works. This month she’s double timing as a principal in the Bach Festival

Philly Tech Week is upon us, May 5 through 13, mostly centered at Rivers Casino on Delaware Avenue, which tells me that maybe I will lose my shirt at the tech of slot machines. There is, however, the Freshwave Teen Tech + Music Festival at the University City Science Center, lots of coding and gaming sessions, and, of course, everything virtual and AI ChatGPT oriented. Fun.

Obscure yet selling in the gazillions in their time, a chic producer Trevor Horn double feature hits The Met Philadelphia on May 11 with both Horn’s one-time band, The Buggles (the duo behind the first ever video to air on MTV, Video Killed the Radio Star) and Seal, the sleekly-arranged electronic R&B singer behind Crazy and Kiss from a Rose fame. I’ll be there.

Deconstructing the classics of theater and literature plays a crucial role in maintaining their canons and modernizing their voices in league with contemporary times. With that, the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective with adapters-actors Jessica Bedford, Kathryn MacMillan, Charlotte Northeast, and Meghan Winch (and director MacMillian) present a world premiere fresh adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre at the Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N American Street in Philadelphia from May 11 to 28, 2023. Featuring Charlotte Northeast as Jane, along with what seems like a Handmaid’s Tale-like chorus of Janes (watch for that), this new take on Jane Eyre offers greater opportunities for independence without losing its romanticism.

(Henry IV, Part II, May 31-June 11, Labuda Center for the Performing Arts, DeSales University, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley; 610-282-WILL; pashakespeare.org) n

All human life outside of Philly’s sports venue row in South Philly will stop as Taylor Swift takes over the city—an outgrowth of her Pennsylvania roots—between May 12 and May 14. Three nights at the Lincoln Financial Stadium for the Swifties. God bless those kids and their moms. n ring Fest Outdoor Holster Peony at gun for about it. 3, mostAvenue, rt at the e Freshniversity ming sesAI Chat- time, a hits The n’s oneirst ever tar) and nger bee there. terature ons and ntempo’ CollecKathryn n Winch premiere Eyre at N Amer8, 2023. ng with horus of Eyre ofwithout e row in over the ots—bethe Linod bless sions that Chet Baker made in 1979 for KRO Radio in Holland. Thanks to Frank, we had a pathway to procure these sessions and get them out. And that was great because the sound of these tapes— of Chet’s trumpet and voice—moved me.”

And moving Feldman, emotionally and artistically, is how sessions such as Baker’s open-ended bluesy runs at standards such as Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke’s “Oh, You Crazy Moon” or a rubbery, upbeat instrumental take on Irving Berlin’s “The Best Thing for You,” or Baker compositions such as “Blue Gilles” come to move the audiences flocking to Jazz Detective’s releases.

“Some record labels operate with a profit-driven motivation. But it’s always, first and foremost, about what excites me. And it starts in the looking for things,” said Feldman of the thrill of the chase.

The same thing was true of working with the very-much-alive Ahmad Jamal on the Live at the Penthouse tapes from 1963–1964 and 1965–1966 (Feldman and I just happened to speak mere days before the pianist’s passing). Vibrant and proactive, having an artist to bounce ideas off of was a valuable opportunity for Feldman.

“Certainly, there is such a magnificent benefit to having the person who made the music working directly with you,” said Feldman of Jamal. “More often than not, I find myself making key executive decisions on behalf of the artist—Chet Baker, Shirley Scott, Bill Evans. In the case of the Penthouse tapes, Mr. Jamal was in the front seat the entire way. He reviewed the music with me and commented on the audio and how we might adjust things. But, also working with me on every aspect of Emerald Night’s assembly, signing off on its artwork—we drove this car together. And that was a wonderful opportunity. Ahmad Jamal has always inspired me as an artist, which started with hearing him as part of my parents’ record collection. My mom had all of Jamal’s albums. I love this man.” With that, Feldman let’s slip with a “stay tuned,” as another volume of Penthouse tapes, 1967-1968, is due out shortly. “Thank you, Ahmad Jamal, for playing such an active role.”

As happy as Feldman is discussing Baker and Jamal, credit must be paid for his work on several re-editions and newly released rarities from the vaults of the enigmatic rhythm and harmony innovator that was pianist and composer Bill Evans.

“Finding Bill Evans’ lost work throughout the last 13 years has taken me through such an amazing journey with his family,” said Feldman of albums such as 2020’s Live at Ronnie Scott’s and 2021’s Behind the Dikes: The 1969 Netherlands Recordings. “That has meant a lot of trust in me on the part of Bill’s family. I love the 3-LP Treasures too. We did hard research on everything Evans, me, and my team. And what was even greater was that these tapes, Evans’ tapes, had never been leaked or heard in a previous incarnation as they came from the archives of Uli Mattson—a producer for Danish radio. He produced and curated many of these Evans sessions, and I worked with Evan Evans, Bill Evans’ son and an artist in his own right. They’re a treasure.”

“These are different offerings of these records—Chet is in glorious form in the studio, as is Bill. The energy and the power of the universe are with me. Along with being inquisitive and finding stuff, it comes to us with luck and love. And when we find these things, we’re not in a mad rush to put them out. We take our time. There’s a lot of review and scrutiny. Sadly, some record labels, I’ll tell you, don’t play by the rules, are motivated solely by profit, and just put things out. We read the tea leaves. We want to put out that which is important. I want to have special stuff—keep up our batting average. And this new Chet stuff and Bill stuff are diamonds. Chet didn’t read music, just played by ear with this rich tone—so many of his sessions are timeless. These 1979 sessions, most of them were done in just one take. Masterful. Chet is iconic for a reason.”

It’s important to note, too, that Feldman, in connection with Elemental, the label behind Evans’ 2023 Treasures, also holds the note on the Deep Digs Music Group, an archival record company that will work toward non-jazz releases. To that end, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention 2022’s Revelations: The Complete ORTF 1970 Fondation Maeght Recordings from the late, great saxophonist and composer Albert Ayler—his last recordings made shortly before his suicide. “Working on this project—this was a labor of love. I sometimes carry tapes on my back for years, but in this case, even more so. We went to labels who didn’t want it, but I was not giving up—this was an important chance to reconstruct his last concerts in full in the Cote d’Azure. Projects such as these are not for the faint of heart, and after seven years of carrying the tapes around, they came out. We read the tea leaves. That is the key.”

Come this autumn, expect Jazz Detective projects from Ahmad Jamal, Cal Tjader, and the godmother of rock and roll (“she was doing windmills on her guitar before Pete Townshend”) Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

“It’s archival, and it moves me—that’s what all of the music I produce and release must do,” said Zev Feldman. “There is always great music to come.” n them. Channeling a voice was crucial to be able to continually write them. just couldn’t be mine. So, I had to make this as broad and universal as possible, which meant that I had to strip a lot of stuff away. And including songs such as “In Fields” and “Black Crown,” which were even more mysterious to me. But I had to trust that they were right because they felt right.

A.D. Amorosi: You're are a Flannery O’Connor fan, but I sense some John Cheever in this new album.

Josh Ritter: Yeah, I can see that. Just off the top of my head, any of us who’ve lived long enough can start to sense parts of or stages of our lives slipping away. Sometimes, you swim through every suburban pool in West Chester to get home; other times, you’re lucky if you follow a voice like that, and it gets you to a new self.

A.D. Amorosi: Are you writing to theme like Spectral Lines before the process starts, or are you hitting upon its themes as you go along, then curating from there?

Josh Ritter: The latter, yeah. This album is like not chipping away at the granite to make a statue; instead, you have to start digging at the quarry. You have this immensity in which to work from. I remember reading that Michelangelo said how he saw the statue inside the marble before it was cut. I really relate to that idea because once you have uncut in front of you, it’s just a huge pile of ideas, hopes, and dreams to pick through and want to put in. It was early before the pandemic. And then you find the theme; then you find the statue underneath. Usually, it starts with a song, a palate from which I’d like to write, and a feeling I’d like to spread across the album. On this one, the song was “Sawgrass,” which I made the first track. That song told me that I was moving in a different direction; I’m going to sit with this. Plus, as I was working on this, it was a time when my mom was losing her battle with ovarian cancer. We had to travel to Idaho for her, me, the kids, and Haley. Lots of travel. A bizarre time. We wound up in my old hometown in Idaho and suddenly back where I grew up. I had a real hard time writing at that moment. Why is writing so unappealing? I was so perplexed by that. My relationship with art was dicey. Without it, I was vulnerable.

A.D. Amorosi: Confusion about work and life is a hard road to hoe. Josh Ritter: I didn't know how I was going to get through all this. This was me now, not a stage. Once that happened, though, as my mom was quickly passing away in my old hometown, I remember looking in a mirror and giving myself a pep talk—I wasn’t worthy of the experience to come; I wasn’t prepared. And from there, just putting my finger on that allowed me to think about writing again, that I would strive to be good. That was wide-open, heart-stopping. And I wanted to turn all that into something universal, something other people could use.

A.D. Amorosi: Michelangelo also had Pope Julius II riding his ass when he stared into stone and pigment. So the spectral line, as a concept, deals in the strongest and weakest spot in an otherwise continuous spectrum whose might or impuissance comes from the absorption of light within its frequency. It’s all atoms and molecules. How does that title fit this new stretch song of yours?

A.D. Amorosi: In terms of a focused set of narratives, the new record feels broader in scope and its universality of themes than your other albums.

Josh Ritter: Well, that makes me feel great because that’s what I was truly going for. There were moments in the writing of Spectral Lines where I had—and still have—all of these long, narrative song stories that are more complete in terms of character. Then I realized that to get the feeling I wanted for this new album, I had to leave those narratives off of the record. That was hard for me, but the words were getting in the way of the stories. There needed to be a musical flow without too many obstructions. I was building a hallway for somebody else to walk down. It

Josh Ritter: The thing that jumped out at me in the last couple of years is that after everything we lost in the pandemic, I was looking for a way to come back with a record with a feeling that was right. I didn’t want to bash down the door or put on my party hat. At the same time, we were discovering exoplanets, reinvesting ourselves in the Hubble telescope, and looking back before the Big Bang or whatever got us here. And all the things that were profoundly eye-opening and soulopening just hit me all at once. Here I am, living this little life in Brooklyn, and I’m wondering about the stars while these true artists—these scientists and astronomers—have the same simple questions as I have. I fell into that vocabulary, the place where gravity flattens things out so that the rings of planets and spectral lines where you can find the composition of atmospheres. And those things are so beautiful to me— that other lonely and confused people could look up, enter a state, and wonder if connections can be made. n