We knew that Josh Ritter’s next album, the follow-up to The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, was virtually in the can, as well as the first draft to his first novel, but thanks to an interview with Albany’s Times Union, we now have a few more details about both projects.
“It’s coming out in April of 2010,” Ritter said of his sixth LP. “I’ve worked on it for about a year now in between touring. I just got it done the other day.” Whereas Historical Conquests was “kind of impressionistic,” Ritter says, “kind of like a Jackson Pollock painting,” he embraced a much slower recording process for the new as-yet-untitled album:
It ended up feeling to me more like an old Italian master, you know, one of those big 60-foot canvases, you know, big oil, big Caravaggio painting. It’s very ornate and orchestral. I’m very excited how it sounds.
As for the novel, Ritter has been careful not to unveil any details, except to say that “there’s no music in it” and in a recent talk with the Washington Post he revealed that it will be “a comedy in the vein of Scottish novelist Muriel Spark.”
Now if only Ritter would start writing screenplays too we could declare him the alt-country Nick Cave at last.