Fever Breaks, the tenth studio album from acclaimed singer, songwriter and performer Josh Ritter, will be released April 26 via Pytheas Recordings/Thirty Tigers and is now available for pre-order at https://ffm.to/feverbreaks. Produced by Grammy Award-winning musician Jason Isbell, the 10-song record was recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A and features Isbell’s band, the 400 Unit. Already receiving widespread attention, Rolling Stone recently spent time in the studio with Ritter and Isbell while finishing the album and calls the music, “classic Ritter on Muscle Shoals-bred steroids.”
Recorded at Nashville’s RCA Studio A with additional recording and mixing at Sound Emporium, the record was engineered by Matt Ross-Spangand features contributions from Isbell (guitar and vocals) and his band the 400 Unit, which includes Derry Deborja (piano, organ and Hohner accordion), Chad Gamble (drums and percussion), Jimbo Hart (fender electric, ukulele and upright bass), Sadler Vaden (electric guitar, acoustic guitar and 12 string acoustic guitar) and Amanda Shires (violin and vocals).
Of the album, Ritter shares with Rolling Stone, “The songs are very reflective of the times in which they were written,” he explains. “As we started coming together and playing, the songs that felt like they were gonna work really jumped out as obvious. From there on, after we recorded in August [2018] we had this really nice time to stop and listen and let the songs marinate a little bit. In that time, the world has just become even crazier. There’s a lot of the record that feels reflective of the moment it was in.”
Over the course of his career Ritter has released ten full-length albums including 2017’s Gathering, which debuted at #4 on Billboard’sAmericana/Folk Albums chart and received widespread critical praise. NPR Music proclaims, “Josh Ritter remains at the top of his game two decades into a highlight-strewn career. He’d be forgiven for loosening his grip, but his hand has never felt surer,” while the HuffPost adds, “Gathering is beautiful and precise, and most of the beauty, to be certain, arises from a prolonged, often intimate contemplation of Ritter’s enormous skill set as an honest bard.” In 2015 Ritter began a close collaboration with Bob Weir and went on to write or co-write many of the 12 songs on Weir’s acclaimed 2016 solo album, Blue Mountain. Pitchfork called the album “quietly adventurous, wise, and a welcome late-career turn,” while Entertainment Weeklydescribed it as “a moving group of tunes worthy of any campfire.”
In addition to his work as a musician, Ritter made his debut as a published author in 2011 with his New York Times best-selling novel Bright’s Passage(Dial Press/Random House). Stephen King wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Bright’s Passage “shines with a compressed lyricism that recalls Ray Bradbury in his prime…This is the work of a gifted novelist.”
FEVER BREAKS TRACKLIST
1. Ground Don’t Want Me
2. Old Black Magic
3. On The Water
4. I Still Love You (Now and Then)
5. The Torch Committee
6. Silverblade
7. All Some Kind of Dream
8. Losing Battles
9. A New Man
10. Blazing Highway Home
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