It’s been a great year for music. In addition to fantastic new albums from Cloud Cult, Modest Mouse, Okkervil River, and Band of Horses, there’s the latest from everyone’s favorite “new Dylan,” Josh Ritter. Ritter’s talent for marrying hooky melodies with knotty, literate lyrics has won him some passionate fans — more than one Gristie is nursing a crush (or man-crush as the case may be, yeah I’m looking at you AB). Out about exactly a year after critical darling The Animal Years, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter brims with 14 new tunes, with not a dud among them. The guy’s clearly at the peak of his powers.
This song, “The Temptation of Adam,” is one of the more musically subdued on the album, but the lyrics are friggin’ amazing. I’ll put them below.
“The Temptation of Adam”
Josh RitterIf this was the Cold War we could keep each other warm
I said on the first occasion that I met Marie
We were crawling through the hatch that was the missile silo door
And I don’t think that she really thought that much of meI never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb
She just came along and started to ignore me
As we waited for the Big One
I started singing her my songs
And I think she started feeling something for meWe passed the time with crosswords that she thought to bring inside
What five letters spell “apocalypse” she asked me
I won her over saying “W.W.I.I.I.”
We smiled and we both knew that she’d misjudged meOh Marie it was so easy to fall in love with you
It felt almost like a home of sorts or something
And you would keep the warhead missile silo good as new
And I watched you with my thumb above the buttonThen one night you found me in my army issue cot
And you told me of your flash of inspiration
You said fusion was the broken heart that’s lonely’s only thought
And all night long you drove me wild with your equationsOh Marie do you remember all the time we used to take
Makin’ love and then ransack the rations
I think about you leaving now and the avalanche cascades
And my eyes get washed away in chain reactionsOh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the map
Of all the places where you thought that love would be found
But I would only need one pin to show where my love’s at
In a top secret location three hundred feet under the groundWe could hold each other close and stay up every night
Looking up into the dark like it’s the night sky
And pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead
And carve our name in hearts into the warheadOh Marie there’s something tells me things just won’t work out above
That our love would live a half-life on the surface
So at night while you are sleeping
I hold you closer just because
As our time grows short I get a little nervousSo I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I.
Would we ever really care the world had ended
You could hold me here forever like you’re holding me tonight
I think about that great big red button and I’m tempted
