Josh Ritter- So Runs the World Away (as promised)

There's nothing like hearing a song and immediately falling in love with it.  That moment when you find yourself singing along to the second chorus even though you don't know the words and are only a minute and a half into your first listen.  That's what I felt when I streamed "Change of Time" off Josh's website weeks before the release of "So Runs the World Away".  I was hooked.  I love the way it transitions from a simple finger picking song to a big anthemic swell of horns guitars and pianos.  It got me excited for the new record.

If you're a complete music nerd like me(I know, I know, you have a "life" or whatever), there's nothing more interesting than listening to an artists' records in progression.  You can hear how they change, how they grow up, how that weird song on their second record that just doesn't seem to fit serves as a logical jumping point to the next record.  Josh's music does that beautifully.  "Hello, Starling" is a great folk-pop record, full of acoustic guitars, whispered vocals and quiet pianos.  It's ideal coffeeshop music.  "The Animal Years" pushes that music forward.  More guitars, more intensity, songs are bigger and bolder.  "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter" is more of an explosion than a record.  A great big cacophony of pianos, guitars, horns and back up singers.  It's a fast, loud record about gunslingers and missile-silos. None of Josh's albums sound like the others, so it's hard to know what to expect.  In the same way that these records build on each other, but are completely independant of one another, "So Runs the World Away" follows that tradition.



From the instrumental opening of "Curtains" to the incredible folky closer "Long Shadows" these songs are as different and varied as anything Josh has ever done.  It's the musical equivalent of throwing paint against a wall, it looks like chaos, but when you step back, it's kind of beautiful.  He's not so much pushing the envelope as he's getting out the scissors, cutting it to shreds, and krazy-glueing it back together in a different shape.  Some songs sound like Paul Simon, some sound like U2, some sound like nothing else.  But any album that includes a piano waltz about an archeologist falling in love with the mummy she discovers (yes, you just read that correctly), is one thing: bold.  And oddly enough, for the most part it works!  "The Curse" (the mummy waltz love song) might just be my favorite track on the record.

There are songs about explorers trapped in the Antarctic ice (the awesome 7 minute opus "Another New World"), the chase for an old convict (the slow chugging "The Remnant"), and an ode to the invisible forces in the world (the uplifting march "Orbital").  There's a lot of good on this record, but I'm not completely sold on some of it.  "Rattling Locks" is a little too formless for my taste but is slowly growing on me, and "See How Man Was Made" is so slow it's kind of sleepy.  Some of the more conventional songs like "Lark" and "Lantern" are oddly enough, the weakest.  But I think this is one of those records where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I'm midway through my third trip through the record.  [Side note: I'm a big believer in the theory that you have to listen to a record twice to really be able to have an opinion on it.  On the first spin, you really don't know what to expect and you're just trying to keep up.  The second time through, you really get a better feel for it and can really write a nice long rambling blog about it.]  And the more I listen the more I like.  The strongest parts are the beginning and the end, the first 3 or 4 songs and the last 3 or 4 are the best.  It loses a little steam in the middle but overall, it's another solid entry into Josh's catalog.