1) No one has ever been happier about playing in his own band. From the moment he literally bounces onstage, Josh Ritter is positively ebullient, grinning ear to ear like he can’t believe he stumbled into this group of musicians. He prances around the stage, his odd brown ’fro and unbuttoned collared shirt looking slightly familiar, though you can’t quite place why or where.

2) Sure, he digs into his catalog, but it’s mostly a night for new songs. Ritter just finished recording his latest album, due sometime around April, so he presents them mostly in their young form. “These are the awkward teenagers of what I hope will grow up to be Brett Favre,” he says.

3) The highlight comes near the end of the set with a new song, “Another New World,” about an explorer charting the northern waters in a ship named Annabel Lee. It’s a gorgeous, haunting dirge, played so quietly that you start to feel a cold ocean chill come over the TLA. The song is sad and dark, of a piece with the Edgar Allan Poe poem from which Ritter’s ship clearly takes her name. Look for this one to become a crowd favorite.

4) After a rollicking “Lillian, Egypt,” Ritter shares what he and his bass player were just talking about: “Zack just told me I look like Bob Roth, which I’m really proud of.” That’s what was so familiar about his look. Happy little trees.

5) You could speculate that Ritter looks so excited even when playing songs he’s played hundreds of times before because he’s so in love with his band, but there’s more than that: Virtually every older tune is reimagined in some way, whether turned from an acoustic ballad to an electric rocker (“Bright Smile”), vice versa (“Kathleen”), taken new melodic turns and twists (“Come and Find Me”), or given renewed cultural poignancy (Obama’s Afghanistan announcement made “Girl in the War” more discomforting than ever, as Ritter mused aloud how, a year ago, we thought everything would be better by now, and now we’re not sure what to think). It’s a down note, but easy to look past when you have a set filled with this much joy.– JEFF BARG

(Setlist after the jump)

Setlist:

Rattling Locks

Rumors

Right Moves

Southern Pacific

Bright Smile

Lillian, Egypt

Girl in the War

Kathleen

The Temptation of Adam

Wings

Mind’s Eye

Remnant

Monster Ballads

Crystal Chandeliers and Burgundy (by Johnny Cash)

Another New World

Harrisburg

To the Dogs or Whoever

Snow Is Gone

Encore:

Moon River (by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini)

Empty Hearts

Come and Find Me

UPDATE: Phawker has two tickets to give away to the first reader to email us at feed@phawker.com. Please include a daytime phone number. Good luck!

Five and a half years ago, before he was the darling of NPR, Josh Ritter walked onstage as opener to Erin McKeown at the TLA, and he did it unplugged. Not just acoustic, but completely unelectrified—so the always-rowdy bar crowd was miraculously hushed into silence to hear Ritter’s uncommonly beautiful Americana. From there, the room was hooked, many of them learning his soft lyrical twists and plaintive melodies for the first time. Since then, thousands of Triple-A radio spins later, he’s released two stellar albums, The Animal Years and The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, the former of which Paste magazine just named No. 13 on its best-albums-of-the-decade list. But despite those heights, when Ritter returns to the TLA this week, the specter of the unknown seduces yet again: He’s wrapped up recording on a brand-new album, and with glowing early reviews of the new tunes, he’s likely to bust out a few for the always-friendly Philly crowd. Again we get to discover him for the first time; no word on if he’ll plug in this time or not. –JEFF BARG

With The Low Anthem, Wed., Dec. 2, 8pm. $20-$23. Theater of Living Arts, 334 South St. www.livenation.com