Josh Ritter: Spectral Lines – Songwriter’s tribute to his mother is an adventurous career detour

Alongside his music career, Josh Ritter is also a successful novelist, with his well-received 2021 book, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All, now being optioned for development as a film. There was a time, as Irish music fans know, when Ritter was an adjunct to the national singer-songwriter scene – more than 20 years ago he was taken under the collective wing of The Frames and he quickly wound his way into the hearts of many with agile folk/Americana that owed obvious debts to Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.

His 11th album is his most adventurous yet and chops off those early influences to construct (as the album title refers to) a conduit that connects him to the memory of his scientist-artist mother, who died just over two years ago. Ritter tweeted at the time, “She loved sunsets and cloudscapes, the smell of the wind through the pines,” and there is such a strong sense of her throughout Spectral Lines that it’s tangible.

The songs are quite different from what you might expect, with Daniel Lanois-like textures – from light-headed ambience and distant echoes to found sound – infiltrating songs as downcast as Horse No Rider, Whatever Burns Will Burn, Any Way They Come and For Your Soul. The final track, Someday, is a languid country-folk throwback with hints of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan – and, perhaps for the album that this is, buds of hope.