"The record's release was met with high anticipation and covered by multiple news and media publications. Stephen King reported looking forward to the album.[14] Irish music magazine Hot Press featured "Josh Ritter week" with free track downloads from the album, front cover picture, and interviews.[15] Upon its release the album was met with very strong reviews. The Irish Independent called it "Ritter's most intriguing and rewarding album to date, it's easily his most diverse."[16] Bob Boilen of NPR's All Songs Considered said of the album, "I've come to expect good records from him...but this one took my breath away."[17]"

Oh really? ⚠️ ↗

"If “The Curse” is the Rosetta Stone of So Runs the World Away, then its thematic bookend “Another New World” is too expansive to fit into any museum. The deeply haunting story of a polar explorer who sacrifices the ship that is his only companion in order to survive the icy desolation, “Another New World” constitutes the elegiac and unsettling thesis of Josh Ritter’s potent new album. So Runs the World Away, both the album title and the music it describes, is redolent less of the thrills and exploits of exploration than of the sad beauty of the unobtainable. Ritter suggests that the gleaming horizons aimed for by the boldest among us can never quite be reached, and even the effort to approach them comes at a great cost. And yet, we must quest on."

You don't say . . . ⚠️ ↗

"Overall, Ritter's lyrics are spot on. None seem forced or overdone. His repeating choruses on "Southern Pacifica", "Lantern" and "Lark" are all quite inviting while being soothing sing-along tracks for long car rides. Even on my least favourite tracks, lyrics are not a complaint. Josh can stitch words together in a keenly unique way where I do not feel as though he is drawing adjectives out of a hat, as I do with other artists in this genre."

Say again? ⚠️ ↗

"It’s not the album’s only song that asks big questions. Ritter’s explorations have seemingly taken him to the edge of the world and back, and he returns fueled by inspiration drawn from travelers, navigators, and scientists– but also daunted by what he’s found lurking at the frontiers of human experience. The opening anthem “Change of Time” sets the tone for the work that follows with its twin themes of love and death– and of the cold, terrifying chasm that lies between them. The next song, “The Curse,” is a piano waltz, a story song in the same league as “The Temptation of Adam” from the last album; it tells the story of a Victorian archaeologist who falls in love with an unearthed mummy. What’s the curse, then? Perhaps it’s mortality itself, or perhaps it’s the fact that the two ever feel in love in the first place, only to be torn asunder by the ravages of time.

Ritter’s resentment grows into a full-fledged showdown with the Almighty; a divine, discontented dialogue flows through the album like a bitter undercurrent. “Rattling Locks,” the album’s most puzzling and provocative number, finds the argument reaching its boiling point, our singer choosing an eternity in Hell over a life of unanswered questions. But it’s clear– at least to this listener– that these songs are not empty provocation; Ritter borrows his own spirit of theological inquiry from the explorers and scientists he writes about, and his angry fist-shaking at God seems to come from a real desire for knowledge and truth."

And once more? ⚠️ ↗

"This is Josh Ritter’s 6th studio album and I feel I can just keep on saying the same thing over and over again. Because on “So Runs The World Away”, Ritter once again proves he’s one of the better songwriters out there and that he is very able to release an album with heartfelt and intriguing songs.

The album sounds very current, both musically and lyrically and is very accessible for pretty much everyone. The overall sound of the album is a little richer (especially in the arrangements) than “Historical Conquests” but the subtleties in the arrangements and the singers/songwriter nature of this artist is never far away. The sentimental The Curse is a a great example of how a musical arrangement can create a mood. Ritter’s vocals can easily, almost literally, breathe life into a song like that."

Sorry, I didn't catch that. ⚠️ ↗

"So Runs the World Away, the fifth studio album from bookish, Idaho-born troubadour Josh Ritter, unfolds like a Flannery O’Connor, Jim Jarmusch, and Mark Twain road trip. Equally steeped in Southern and Midwest Gothic Americana, the son of a pair of neuroscientists has crafted his most unique collection of songs to date, borrowing characters from mythology, literature, and world history and letting them run wild in the increasingly adventurous, neo-traditional folk style that his become his forte over the last decade. The elegiac, slow-burn opener “Change of Time” sets the stage, lamenting “battered hulls and broken hardships/leviathan and lonely” before visiting a 1000-year-old Egyptian pharaoh on the deck of a steamship on his way to New York in “Curses.” The voyage continues by train on “Southern Pacifica,” descends into bluesy, Tom Waits-ian solipsism on “Rattling Locks,” and culminates in So Runs the World Away’s brilliant mid-album centerpiece, "Folk Bloodbath," which pits some of the murder ballad’s biggest names (Louis Collins, Delia, and Stagger Lee) against each other with predictable results. Standout cuts in the second half include the verdant, bouncy “Lark,” the stoic, John Jacob Niles-inspired “See How Man Was Made,” and the spirited, quasi-spiritual/science rocker “Orbital,” resulting in a typically fine batch of new folk standards and a high-water mark for an artist already used to paddling around on oceans too deep and vast for modern cartography."

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And all of those were just from the first page of reviews of the album. Now, pretty much everyone who listens to and reviews this sort of music regularly recognizes that Ritter is an amazing songwriter. But apparently you know better. Ooooookay. ;-)