Josh Ritter – The Temptation of Adam

I find this song haunting, hopeful, majestic, melancholy, and tragic. It’s about a love that just couldn’t possibly work in the outside world. In the backdrop of a war, there’s this beautiful thing that grows, but that could only grow under those specific conditions, which is really rather terrible. Both parties falling in love, both inherently distracted and aware of the impending doom…while simultaneously embracing and almost anticipating the end of it all.

Josh Ritter, you’ve done it again.

I love his new album, but it’s quite different from his past work. This one is the most like “The Animal Years” in its earnestness and folk-centered style.

***

“If 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 missle silo door,
And I don’t think that she really thought that much of me.

I never had to learn to love her,
Like I learned to love the bomb.
She just came along and started to ignore me.
But as we waited for the big one,
I started singing her my songs,
And I think she started feeling something for me.

We passed the time with crosswords
That she thought to bring inside,
“What five letters spell ‘apocalypse?’” she asked me,
I wandered over singing, “WWIII.”
She smiled, and we both knew that she had misjudged me.

Oh 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 missle silo good as new,
And I’d watch you with my thumb above the button.

Then 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 equations.

Oh Marie, do you remember all the time we used to take?
We’d make our love then ransack the rations.
I think of you leaving now, and the avalanche cascades,
And my eyes get washed away in chain reactions

Oh Marie, if you would stay, then we could stick pins in the map
Of all the places 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 300 feet under the ground.

Oh, we 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 a old oak tree instead,
And carve our name in hearts into the warhead.

Oh 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 nervous.

Oh, I think about the big one:
WWIII.
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 big red button, and I’m tempted…