Product Description

Josh Ritter's first catalog re-issue! His 2001 recording Golden Age Of Radio has been drastically improved. The album now includes a BONUS cd, featuring Josh performing the ENTIRE ALBUM solo acoustic, plus b-sides and videos. The bonus acoustic album was recorded in 2008, so these recordings have not been previously available. Fans of Josh treasure the acoustic versions of his songs because they often provide a vastly different perspective on the music. In addition, since these acoustic tracks were recorded seven years after the 2001 release, they most certainly offer a more seasoned, and possibly altered frame of reference, on the original gems. Both CDs are now housed in a gorgeous tri-fold cardboard sleeve, with NEW artwork and liner notes specifically written for this re-issue by CAMERON CROWE

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Come and Find Me
2. Me & Jiggs
3. You ve Got the Moon
4. Lawrence, KS
5. Anne
6. Roll On
7. Leaving
8. Other Side
9. Harrisburg
10. Drive Away
11. Golden Age of Radio
12. Song for the Fireflies

Disc 2:

1. Come and Find Me (solo acoustic)
2. Me & Jiggs (solo acoustic)
3. You've Got the Moon (solo acoustic)
4. Lawrence, KS (solo acoustic)
5. Anne (solo acoustic)
6. Roll On (solo acoustic)
7. Leaving (solo acoustic)
8. Other Side (solo acoustic)
9. Harrisburg (solo acoustic)
10. Drive Away (solo acoustic)
11. Golden Age of Radio (solo acoustic)
12. Song for the Fireflies
13. A Country Song (original recording)
14. Don t Wake Juniper (studio b-side)
15. Come & Find Me (jackdrag remix)
16. Other Side (jackdrag remix)
17. Me & Jiggs (Video by glen hansard)
18. Other Side (video by darius zelkha)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14108 in Music
• Released on: 2009-04-14
• Number of discs: 2

Review
Josh Ritter THE GOLDEN AGE OF RADIO Nothing quite beats the power of a song that arrives perfectly. It can be the melody from a distant window, a guilty-pleasure piece of pop fluff or even the exquisitely wrong song at the wrong time. The fact is that life can be the best d.j. of them all. A song or an artist can land in your life in the most profound and mysterious ways and from that moment on that record defines an afternoon, a season, a city or a life. Such it is with Golden Age of Radio, an album that casts a spell from first note to last. Josh Ritter had already made a record before it, but Golden Age was his first as a fully-committed, this is my life and there s no heading back recording artist. The album arrived with a suitcase full of promise, bags packed perfectly. The music has the assurance and the sly commitment of a writer capturing exactly the mood he was chasing. Recorded in 2001 the magic begins with the opening track, Come and Find Me. That one song will forever remind me of the summer of 2004. We were working on Elizabethtown, a tough movie to make and finish, but we always knew where we were headed when we played Come and Find Me. It became our emotional touchstone. We played it a lot. And like any great song, it pretty much claimed every room it was played in. Josh is one of those rare artists who writes and performs with an open heart. Some of these songs recall the nobility of a young Johnny Cash, or the scuffling Paul Simon, but it s all Josh s artful travelogue. As a storyteller, he s fueled by the legend and lore of characters arriving and leaving, celebrating sadness and exhilaration equally, but his songs can sometimes feel like private snapshots kept in dresser drawers. Those are my favorites. And always, almost out of nowhere, Josh can slay you with the line you didn t see coming. June is like an echo of the sounds we never made, he sings in Song For the Fireflies. It s the kind of lyrical perfection that arrives easily, and somehow never leaves. Ritter s own lore is that Me and Jiggs, the album s second song, was an unplanned-for hit in Ireland. The Frames, never one to lag in the taste department, took him on tour and a fevered early Irish acceptance was born. Songs like You ve Got The Moon announced a very big arrival, a talent just rounding the first bend of his career. The big journey had begun, and these home-recorded lo-fi gems took flight on the stages of the world. Today, his audience continues to grow steadily and passionately and the early power of Golden Age endures, like the stripped-down brilliance of Buddy Holly s The Apartment Tapes. And so a tip of our hats to Golden Age of Radio. Just around the bend would come Hello Starling, The Animal Years and Historical Conquests, but the building blocks were all there in Golden Age. This is a record that will always whisk me back to a Southern summer filled with purpose, memories and the sound of 17 year-old cicadas on their last big, noisy wing-ding. That summer. When one song and one artist meant the world, and still does. Cameron Crowe September 2008 --Cameron Crowe--September 2008

Customer Reviews

Wireless Wonderment
Maybe there was a time when radio would have picked up on a man like Josh Ritter. Perhaps the early seventies, when you could scan the dial and find the likes of James Taylor or Gordon Lightfoot. But in 2009, only National Public Radio or a dedicated folkie type of show would be picking the good stuff off of Ritter's "Golden Age Of Radio." As it is, I wound up discovering him at the 2009 Newport Folk Festival, where he and his band delivered a high energy show that blended the best of his singer-songwriter sensibility with a harder edge that bordered on Springsteen.

"Golden Age" is a more homey, lo-fi type of record, mining both the singer-songwriter and Americana storytelling veins. Ritter has something of a low-tenor that isn't the best singing voice, but as he sings that he's sitting on the porch and pouring his heart out to Townes Van Sandt, you can feel he's got his heart in the write place. The arrangements are, for the most part, spartan. An accordion accents "Lawrence Kansas" while "Harrisburg" has little more than a deep bass violin (I think) underneath it to accent the despairing lyrics. When Ritter lets his band kick in ("Me and Jiggs," the title track), he starts to show the flair that I witnessed in his live shows.

Given that "Golden Age Of Radio" was initially released in 2002, when Ritter was just entering his 20's, he was still working out the earnestness of the folk music he'd just discovered. This is serious stuff, and quite good; a young man on the brink of unearthing his greatest strengths. Fans of Iron and Wine or Conor Oberst will enjoy this the most.

The Definitive "Golden Age of Radio" Release
This is the fourth iteration (release) of this album, first self-released on Hungry Ear Records in 2000, re-released on Signature Sounds in 2002, again in 2004 with a bonus disc, and now self-released in 2009 with a bonus disc that wraps all releases together into one tidy volume.

The first 2009 disc is the same as the 2002 and 2004 releases, whereas the second 2009 disc contains everything from the 2004 bonus disc (except the Leonard Cohen "Chelsea Hotel #2" cover), plus:
a) "A Country Song": the only major difference between the Hungry Ear 2000 release and all subsequent: a fast-paced acoustic version of the title track "Golden Age of Radio"
b) "Don't Wake Juniper": an unreleased B-side.

The highlight of disc two, and the reason this is worth purchasing if you already have one of the other releases, is Ritter's acoustic rendition of the entire album, recorded in 2008. Some terrific versions on there, namely "Golden Age of Radio".

bonus acoustic songs are amazing
The bonus acoustic songs are amazing, revealing dimensions not heard in the terrific originals, which is surprising because they are sonically sparser. I hope Josh Ritter does the same with The Animal Years. The two music videos on the bonus disc are pedestrian.

If you don't know these songs, listen to them at his website (for some reason Amazon editors deleted the link) and you'll end up buying them because they are so good.