Josh Ritter just announced a March 2013 release for his new album, The Beast in Its Tracks, previewing his 7th full-length with a pair of heart-mending cuts penned in the 18-month wake of divorce: “Joy To You Baby” and today’s second taste, “New Lover.” Put to tape quickly and understated (not unlike its precursor, February’s Bringing In the Darlings EP), Ritter describes how the studio approach mirrored the healing/writing process:
Far from the grand, sweeping feel of the songs on So Runs the World Away, these new ones felt like rocks in the shoe, hard little nuggets of whatever they were, be it spite, remorse, or happiness. I told all this to Sam Kassirer, my producer and friend. If we recorded these songs, which felt so personal, their starkness needed a corresponding simplicity of production. I hadn’t composed this stuff, I’d scrawled it down, just trying to keep ahead of the heartbreak, and they needed to be recorded like that.
NPR premiered the bittersweet latter track today. Hear it below:
“New Lover”