Happy 15th Anniversary to Josh Ritter’s fourth studio album The Animal Years, originally released the UK March 20, 2006 and in the US April 11, 2006.
This past summer, Josh Ritter played The Animal Years in full on an acoustic guitar as part of his Silo Sessions series. Early in the show, he revealed that the album came from a place of anger and confusion, a lot of which was connected to the Iraq War.
I didn’t know that. To me, The Animal Years was always pastoral, easy. There was this massive, apocalyptic thing near the end, which I’ll talk about in a moment, but I didn’t know that the fun, springtime grooves of my favorite jaunty troubadour made up a war record. (Should I have figured it out from “Girl in the War?” Perhaps.)
But Ritter explained in the same performance that the songs ended up as love songs, even though they started out from this place of anger. So maybe it’s both: Ritter gets mad about the war because of what it does to love.
Let’s start with war, which materializes most obviously in “Thin Blue Flame,” the penultimate track that fills increasingly elongating verses with blasphemy and apocalyptic vision. This is top-ten Ritter. It’s pretty clear from “Thin Blue Flame” that things are not good and that Ritter fears what this new iteration of war means for our humanity. Evergreen content. He eventually concludes that there’s no hope in looking to heaven for answers, and that everything that can help us get through this is sitting right there in front of us.
“Thin Blue Flame” is the only song on The Animal Years where Ritter gets properly livid in his voice and instrumentation, but that’s not to say that there isn’t anger on the rest of the record. On “Wolves,” a jaunty track driven by its opening piano riff, he describes malevolent forces personified as wolves preparing to tear a relationship limb from limb. “Best for the Best,” a beautifully simple song, captures a feeling of abandonment as the narrator travels from town to town looking for work and a sense of safety while the rich get richer.
Now let’s talk about love. The musical settings, metaphors, and circumstances let the tracks on The Animal Years do double duty. When sung on their own, they’re interesting stories with memorable melodies. “Good Man,” for example, is one of Ritter’s most exciting songs in a live performance. Taken out of the context of The Animal Years, it feels like a fun, self-deprecating love song. But when you put it back in the context of the album, knowing this background about war and fear, the foot-stomping sound begins to feel more like something Ritter is willing himself to believe after years of defeats and abandoned hope. It’s a desperate attempt at fun.
This changing context actually might be what matters the most. The fact that the live and album versions of “Good Man” can mean such different things reveals that truths that might feel universal (dry spells, hard times) might be painful for many different reasons that you can only get when you listen to someone’s full album. Their Animal Years.
That partial vision is, of course, how we encounter most of the people in our lives. Only very rarely do you get to hear someone’s full story and their reason for wanting those things—and this is what Ritter gives us.
Which isn’t to say that there isn’t confusion and mystery still. The opening track, “Girl In The War,” remains a fan favorite and concert staple, emerging out of a fog as the album begins. The simple song structure masks some complicated feelings about feeling abandoned by religion in the face of danger. It’s an angry song—Ritter is worried that the girl in the war is completely unprotected—but the tone is wistful as he remembers her. It’s love and anger all rolled into one, the kind of song that hangs in the air long after it’s over.
The other indisputable Animal Years classic is “Idaho,” which barely rises above a whisper (it is excellent early-morning listening). It’s not clear why Ritter is going to Idaho. Sometimes it feels like he’s being chased there; sometimes it feels like he’s looking for something. He feels like the kind of person you’d encounter and know there’s a story inside of, but he’s only going to give you enough to get interested and nothing more. With its impressive use of silence, “Idaho” sits directly in the middle of the album, not letting us feel too comfortable among all of the feel-good arrangements that you expect on a Josh Ritter album.
Of course, the lingering question about The Animal Years is how it plays now that the world has fallen apart even more than it had in 2006. “Thin Blue Flame” feels less like a surprise now, more of a foregone conclusion. Of course, we’re screwed. Of course, the guy in “Best for the Best” can’t get ahead.
If anything, The Animal Years in 2021 reminds us to be livid and to recognize that there is an entire interiority to everyone that we usually don’t get to hear in casual encounters. Remembering that should get us to remember that the stakes are high. It’s an album that asks us to remember the human, even when humanity feels corrupt.
LISTEN: