|
Raspy-voiced Ray lays
his cards on the table
- Ray Lamontagne - Till The Sun Turns Black (RCA)
Rating: 9 out of 10
Jan-Christian Sorensen
jsorensen@nsnews.com
STRIKE Ray Lamontagne's name from the "sophomore slump" list.
In fact, the enigmatic, raspy voiced troubadour who burst onto the scene like a latter-day Nick Drake two years back with the dark-yet-dazzling Trouble (2004) almost overshadows that debut with this powerful, visceral followup.
Lamontagne, who lives alone in a cabin in a small town in Maine, rarely grants interviews and has even performed in the dark to separate himself from his audience, pulls back the veil a bit more on this CD, allowing listeners a front-row seat to some very personal - and often, painful - revelations.
Where his first album basked in the warm light of love's glow, Till The Sun Turns Black is a sombre reflection on frailties and the long, frequently treacherous path to forgiveness. If you want to read between the lines, Lamontagne's marriage crumbled between the two albums, and he lays all his cards on the table in what sounds like a last-gasp bid for self-preservation.
On Empty, Lamontagne tackles existential angst and bittersweet memories of a woman in a bucolic setting: "She lifts her skirt up to her knees/Walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing/I never learned to count my blessings/I choose instead to dwell in my disasters..."
Barfly - a breezy, lighthearted message in a half-empty bottle (everybody loves a drunk, right?) - gets a lift from Rachel Yamagata and Lamontagne's repeated whispery confession that: "I'm going nowhere lately."
Three More Days is one of only a few songs on the album where Lamontagne shakes off his shackles and lets loose, as a triumphant horn section and a Wurlitzer electric piano provide the bounce to Lamontagne's blues. He's as close as white men get to James Brown as the song careens to a close.
That same horn section takes on a muted, mournful tone - and is the perfect accompaniment for producer Ethan Johns, who strums along on uke - on Gone Away From Me, as Lamontagne looks back over a tattered landscape: "For a while I sat there/Staring at her photograph/For a while I cried/And tried not to make a scene/There was a time/When we were young/I used to make her laugh/But life is long/My love has gone away from me..."
The next song, Lesson Learned, is as raw and angry as confessionals go. It offers a stark glimpse of how betrayal, insults and accusations can train-wreck two lovers, and how words can be just as deadly as weapons. Anyone who has watched a relationship splinter at the seams won't be able to swallow that lump in their throat; Lesson Learned cuts to the bone, and with Lamontagne's angry cries and the only accompaniment an acoustic and Spanish guitar, it's like putting a match to a fuse: "Well the truth it fell so heavy/Like a hammer through the room/That I could choose another over her/You always side I was an actor, babe/I guess in truth you thought me just an amateur..."
And then, like in the aftermath of most fights, there's a peaceful interlude, and the storm subsides a little for the instrumental number Truly, Madly, Deeply.
He borrows a page from the Rolling Stones' Dead Flowers on You Can Bring Me Flowers, with the horns again focusing the underlying emotion: this time, acrimony.
Lamontagne is a truly original artist, and he's on the edge of something very scary and something very great on Till The Sun Turns Black.
On the song Can I Stay, Lamontagne delivers a tender lullaby, sounding wounded and worn, like a man trying to find his way home.
He never quite gets there, but by the end of the album - when he closes his sophomore chapter with the introspective Within You, which repeats a simple-yet-inspirational maxim ("War is not the answer/The answer is within you") - at least it sounds like he finds a little peace.
published on 11/10/2006
|
