Josh Ritter & The Royal City Band

The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter catches the Idaho musician in the midst of a radical transformation. While the previous release, The Animal Years, had Ritter thinking about the state of the nation, his latest offering finds him pining for Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and Florence Nightingale, all of whom seem to be stuck together in the belly of a whale, a la Jonah. He also manages to squeeze in a few admiring words about ladies underwear and thats well before Ritter, backed by drums, bass and organ and cacophony, arrives at a rollicking chorus you might be able sing along with if you're quick enough to get all the words. Ritter is clearly having fun and you will too, but there is a method to his madness. Those legendary heroines he name-checks were each responding to an inner voice that pushed them toward some extraordinary mission, one both noble and a little foolhardy. "Those voices can be pretty confusing," he says, "but there is no doubt that if you follow your two a.m. voices you'll end up someplace fairly extraordinary."