These are the posts where I gush about some song that I’ve got a huge crush on at the moment, and you put up with it and listen because you’re a good friend.
See that smile? It's why seeing Josh Ritter live is one of my favorite concert memories. (Glenn Ross via joshritter.com)“Change of Time,” Josh Ritter
Two minutes into Josh Ritter’s latest, So Runs the World Away, I was already feeling like a chump for having failed to give it a listen before 2010 came to a close. Where were my priorities? Ritter’s albums always have at least two tracks that leave me flabbergasted at his songwriting talent, and my jaw was already slack halfway through the opening track.
The Moscow, Idaho, native is particularly accomplished at creating dreamscapes with his lyrics, full of the epic sweep of myth and history. (“Wolves” and “Thin Blue Flame” from The Animal Years, one of my favorite albums of the last decade, are just two examples that spring to mind.) With “Change in Time,” Ritter literally describes a dream of being adrift on some dark ocean. As the song unleashes a storm of martial electric guitar and sixteenth-note runs, it’s only the sight of his wife asleep next to him when he opens his eyes that quiets the tempests in his head and gives him the strength to keep on swimming.
It’s beautiful stuff, and Ritter pulls it off much better than all the tortured prose and “The Tempest” allusions that I just deleted. Rather than me trying to summarize it, you should just download the song and read along with the lyrics below.
“Change of Time” has been featured prominently on the TV show Parenthood as well as the trailer for some new Natalie Portman weepfest that has Lifetime Movie Network written all over it. Hopefully the song is introducing Ritter and his talents to a wider audience, because the man deserves it.
I had a dream last night
I dreamt that I was swimming
And the stars up above
Directionless and drifting
Somewhere in the dark
Were the sirens and the thunder
And around me as I swam
The drifters who’d gone under
(CHORUS)
Time, love
Time, love
Time, love
It’s only a change of time
I had a dream last night
And rusting far below me
Battered hulls and broken hardships
Leviathan and lonely
I was thirsty, so I drank
And though it was salt water
There was something ’bout the way
It tasted so familiar
(CHORUS)
The black clouds I’m hanging
This anchor I’m dragging
The sails of memory rip open in silence
We cut through the lowlands
All hands through the saltlands
The white caps of memory
Confusing and violent
I had a dream last night
And when I opened my eyes
Your shoulder blade, your spine
Were shorelines in the moon light
New worlds for the weary
New lands for the living
I could make it if I tried
I closed my eyes I kept on swimming
