Metro Pulse/Platters

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This Week: Josh Ritter's travelin' tunes, boards of canada's unsettling soundtrack, and the Clancy Brothers' drinking music

Josh Ritter
golden age of radio (Signature Sounds)

Josh Ritter's from Idaho, and he sounds like it. His gently tuneful country-folk-rock spreads out languorously, invoking wide open spaces with no particular place to go. He sings in a seductive, sleepy drawl that variously recalls Will Oldham, Nick Drake and even our own Scott Miller. Most of the songs on golden age of radio, his second indie-label effort, get by on spare arrangements, rolling melodies and Ritter's finely shaded melancholy.

Like most good troubadours, the 24-year-old writes a lot about places ("Lawrence, KS," "Harrisburg") and the spaces between them ("Roll On," "Leaving," "Drive Away"). There's a general sense of discontent here—"I'm still waiting for the whiskey to whisk me away," he mumbles—spiked with romantic longing. That's best illustrated on the album's arresting title track, one of its few legitimate rockers. Over a rumbling bass and sustained organ, Ritter conjures a Saturday night spent looking for something to do, "with my radio on, singing a country song soft and low." Wandering through a sprawling landscape of billboards, malls and "megachurch stadiums," he quotes bitterly from Springsteen's "Thunder Road": "Can we get out if we leave right now?"

But on the more reconciled "Me and Jiggs," Ritter sounds willing to accept whatever fleeting joys he can find: "Me and my friends sitting in the park drinking beer underneath the trees/ Lying on your back as the sun goes down/ You know it's perfect 'cause you gotta leave." On an album of songs about leaving and letting go, it's a reminder that there's always something worth holding onto.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

boards of canada
geogaddi (Warp Records)

When it comes to electronic music, I'm a dilettante—I can appreciate the art of it, find some of it pleasant, but it's hard to get too excited about it.

So much of electronic music aims for mere ambiance, a real-life soundtrack. You drive in your car or get out on a dance floor, and the music puts a layer between you and everyone else. I'm not dismissing it. I just prefer traditional song structures with melodies and words.

But the Scottish duo of Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison—boards of canada—have dumped all of my notions of electronica out the window. They make music that refuses to sit in the background, a soundtrack that takes over the movie. With their first album, Music Has The Right To Children, boards established themselves as artists who don't fit into any of the neat sub-categories of electronica. Loops were not endlessly repeated throughout each track, beautiful melodies materialized but quickly vanished, and often the tracks only lasted for a minute instead of droning on for 10. Their music is instantly hummable, but there's layers of unsettling emotion buried within.

On their new release, geogaddi, boards have outdone themselves. The compositions often feel like ghosts, with whiffs of our culture floating throughout. Trickling water, squawking seagulls, a child giving a report about energy, static from a phonograph (or is it a fire crackling?), a noisy crowd, people counting, the distorted voice of a hypnotist—these and other sounds are laced into a lush soundscape that is mournful, spooky and ultimately uplifting. None of it feels like filler, despite running 66 minutes. My interest in electronica will likely always be superficial, but boards of canada have created music too gorgeous and compelling to ignore.

—Joe Tarr

The Clancy Brothers
The Best of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (Columbia/Legacy)

My father's house was always full of music from the '60s folk revival. Joan Baez, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkle became so much sonic wallpaper. The Clancy Brothers (and a bottle of whiskey) were always brought out whenever my uncle came to visit. As a kid, I never quite understood why these Italian brothers would find such pleasure in a bunch of Irish songs. As an adult, I understand that this is great music to drink to, full as it is of high emotions, death, and sing-along choruses. Some bluegrass seems to have the same flavor, which shouldn't be much of a surprise given their common roots.

The older I've gotten, the more I appreciate the Clancys' uncanny ability to walk the razor-sharp line between tragedy and humor—and to do it with crisp harmony. The Clancys and Tommy Makem never sang the bonny green tunes that have become a caricature for life on the Emerald Isle, like "Danny Boy." Instead, their repertoire draws from the strife on the island, songs of dead sons and British rule. But, rather than The Best Of... being a disc that makes you want to slash your wrists, the wit and joy each performance contains is a reassurance that living is OK, even when life itself is turbulent.

The recordings themselves aren't always clean—most were remastered from 40-year-old concert tapes—and there is at least one cut, "A Nation Once Again," that doesn't fit the tone of the others. But the disc as a whole is a great primer for anyone who enjoys well-made songs, with or without the whiskey.

—Adrienne Martini