A Track You Should Hear:

The Temptation of Adam
Josh Ritter

Mike Morris | managing editor
mmorris2@smcvt.edu

Download available here

Ritter has been playing this new cut on his recent solo acoustic tour and it leaves me unable to wait for his new record to be released. The song features clever lyrics, some pretty masterful finger picking and, best of all, a legal download (Ritter, a wonderfully giving artist, allows for audience taping and trading of his live shows, where this file comes from).

Adam details the burgeoning relationship between two Army officers living in a secret below-ground missile silo in the present time. The ‘temptation’ of the title refers to the want to push the ‘great big button’ so as to end to world on a high note for the lovers stuck beneath the ground, whose relationship would have little chance above. With some cheeky physics references thrown in the song is delightful on numerous levels, and, when compared with earlier Ritte songs in a similar vein (Hotel Song from his first release or You Don’t Make It Easy, Babe from Hello Starling) it serves as a good marker for how much Ritter has improved his singing, song writing and musicianship.

GPA 3.9 (I’d give it a 4.0, but I want to leave a little room for the studio version to be better).