There's a good chance I've featured Josh Ritter here before. But he deserves to be mentioned again. He is in my opinion, one of our greatest living lyricists. He has been reissuing his older albums on vinyl and I've gladly been snatching them up as they have been released in limited quantities. Originally put out in 2007, I was not familiar with this album so it was a real treat to dive in and it does not disappoint! The tracks Right Moves and The Temptation of Adam are two stand out tracks that deserve a place in any playlist. 

The characters in Chevengur and the tales of their misadventures feel to me like taking Don Quixote, splitting him into multiple miniatures, and turning them loose on the Russian steppe. Platanov was one of the great Russian novelists. An early true believer in Soviet ideology, he became one it's harshest critics when it failed to live up to it's promise and his work was banned until after his death. The story of Chevengur is relatable to modern times in the vast differences between the quickly changing attitudes of the urban centers and the reinterpretaion of ideas in places isolated from the seats of power.