Where did it all go right for Josh Ritter? The last time yours truly caught him live a few years back at Vicar Street, a fine set was greeted with appreciative but polite applause. Tonight the reception accorded him bordered on hysteria. Clearly the Dylan-inspired Idaho troubadour is now adored and feted in this country like few before him.
Why this should be the case is not - on the face of it - all that clear. Ritter’s songs are well-crafted, easy-on-the-ear, if cleverly derivative, while his voice is pleasant if indistinctive and anything but soulful. But like Nick Hornby’s hero in High Fidelity he combines a long list of averages into something much more than the sum of its parts. Add in his rangy good looks, shy-boy demeanour and you have the perfect package. His well-heeled audience certainly seemed to think so. Virtually everyone in the packed and sweltering Tri-pod sang along with every word of every song. Between numbers they hung onto his every utterance, shushing anyone who dared to speak above a whisper, and when he downed a beer in one gulp, he was cheered to the rafters. The band responded with a blistering performance while a five-man brass section added considerable punch to the sound. The set included long time favourites such as the plaintive ballad ‘Kathleen’ and the Dylanesque pair, ‘Harrisburg’ and ‘Snow Is Gone’ along with new numbers from The Historical Conquests Of... (arguably his strongest album to date) including the quite superb ‘Right Moves’. But the “highlight” for many was a so-so version of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’ (performed sans microphone) which was greeted with the kind of delirium that the Boss himself would have been surprised at.
Along the way a beaming Ritter joked about his appearance on the Ian Dempsey show, offered profuse thanks to his Irish fans and local label boss [Dave O’Grady] and generally basked in the non-stop adoration that flowed stagewards. A pair of well-dressed girls on the way out said it was the best concert they’d ever attended and who would argue with them?
Rittermania indeed!