By Chris Zebo
We know very little about Ray LaMontagne. The enigmatic, sheepish singer-songwriter has notoriously shunned the media since the release of his first album, Trouble, in 2004. Of the little the media has gleaned about him over the years, we know that his upbringing was pickled by emotional distress and a broken family. His mother was the antithesis of a stay-at-home mom; his father was erratic, violent and eventually abandoned the family.
We know Ray was a bad kid in school. He’d cut class and read fantasy novels alone in the woods. We know he has always been camera shy and hates the public eye. He hides his face behind a beard, and when he plays live shows, he seldom addresses the audience and prefers not to have lights shining on him. And we know he worked at a shoe factory in Maine before becoming a musician, working 65-hour workweeks. As the legend goes, while working one night at 4 in the morning, he heard a Steven Still’s song on the radio that inspired him quit his job and become a musician. And…that’s about the gist of it.
But Ray has never been a mystery. If his awkward public personae is fabled for its obscurity and social aversion, the three albums he’s released in the past 6 years have given flesh and bone to one of the most talented singer-songwriters of the last decade.
On his latest album released last week, God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise, Ray returns with 10 songs that have critics mixed. Some have written that God Willin’ departs from the LaMontagne formula established in his three previous releases. His music has always been highly regarded for how immediately disarming it is, and the candor of his lyrics always divulged a rare intimacy in his music that’s been lacking from the saturated singer-songwriter genre.
Other critics are flummoxed by the range of musical styles Ray and his band the Pariah Dogs have amassed on the new album. They’d prefer the group to stick to one range of styles, set the album’s tone, and not deviate too far from the formula of previous releases.
Both discriminations hold some water. This is the first album that LaMontagne has entirely self produced. The last three releases were produced under the direction of long-time producer Ethan Johns. Not only did Ray take the production reigns, but he also took the band out of the industry studio and brought them to his private home in Massachusetts to record the album. The band recorded for two straight weeks in the serene woods of Western Mass., free of creative controls and executive direction. Consequently, the group took more liberties with their newfound freedom, exploring new sounds and varying the style pattern they’d established in previous releases.
If the album is less private and more public, it might be because being in the public eye has finally caught up with LaMontagne. Some of the songs on the album do sound less inspired and much more packaged, like the album’s saccharine sounding opener “Repo Man.” Lyrically, the song doesn’t stray from Lamontagne’s perspicacity and prose styling. But musically, the song sounds like a funky blues standard from a bygone era, with nothing of the innovations Ray has made to the blues on previous albums.
He’s also less shy about showing his roots and where he takes his inspiration, nearly to the point of plagiarization. In “Like Rock & Roll and Radio” you’re almost afraid that Ray has given up innovating folk and within a few bars of the song you expect Neil Young to start singing. Another track from the album called “For the Summer” starts out sounding like a folkier intro to Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle.”
But Ray redeems himself with songs like “Are We Really Through”, proving that he still masters the torch song. Greg Leisz’s pedal steel excursions brighten up the background of an otherwise darkly lamentable track, a nice addition to the lineup. On the title track of the album, Ray’s fans will rejoice in a song that harkens back to the contemplative, soulful songs of Till the Sun Turns Black, like “Enemy” and “Barfly.” His voice teeters between Bob Seger and Joe Cocker on this one, and Leisz’s pedal steel–again–steals the show. Ray’s ability to have his voice sound unstable and precise at the same time keeps the listener on edge, waiting for the moment he slips off key (he doesn’t).
So much has been said about LaMontagne’s voice already, but it really is something to write about again and again. He’s explained in the past that he sings through his gut and not through his nose, which creates his patented rasp and mellifluous delivery. In this record, he certainly retains his trademarked sultriness.