Josh Ritter's New Album Spawned From Mummy Story

The third song on singer-songwriter Josh Ritter's new album, 'So Runs the World Away,' is a Simon and Garfunkel-style piano ballad called 'The Curse,' a song Ritter says spawned the rest of the record, his most narrative-driven work to date. "The first time when I really started to equate a story with the song, I realized why I love people like Flannery O'Connor," Ritter tells Spinner. "She just lets bad things happen to the characters. I don't think the record is any darker than my other records -- more happens to the characters, bad things to happen to people. That's what makes it a story."

At the heart of it, Ritter says 'The Curse' is a love story but it's told from the perspective of a mummy who pretends he's dead in New York City. He learns how to nearly function as a modern-day human, eventually breaking free of his display case. It's a melancholy ballad but one of the more poignant moments that grace Ritter's new work.

"For a song like that, the goal was to try and tell a full story," Ritter explains. "You try to leave something to the imagination but you can only leave so much. It was really important to get the character just right. The narrative was simple but I really wanted the character to have a serious interaction."

"The fact that he was a mummy was the funniest part," he adds.

For Ritter, the span between 'So Runs the World Away' and his last album, 2007's 'The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter,' was his longest between records. The time away was beneficial this go-round, creating a more varied sound throughout with Ritter exploring new ways of writing lyrics, of which 'The Curse' is a great example. "In a lot of other ways, the styles diverged a little bit," he says. "It captures a moment: this is the slow dance, this is the breakup in the car. I really wanted a full trajectory of a story and more than just a feeling. That was what was more interesting to me right now."

'So Runs the World Away' is out now on Pytheas Recordings.