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Some singer/songwriters (think Paul Westerberg and Elliott Smith) develop their world-weariness through the unforgiving trials of passing years and the heart-breaking grind of the music business. Others (Van Morrison, Neil Young) seem to have sprung from out of nowhere with the fully formed soul of a life well-lived. Ray LaMontagne belongs with the latter. On this, his debut, LaMontagne has crafted a handful of quietly devastating meditations on life and love--and delivered them with a raspy vocal all his own. The simple, mournful lyrics of "Burn," "Shelter" and the title track recall a Hank Williams ballad, and the reserved production by alt-country/americana genius Ethan Johns (the Jayhawks, Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon) make this a great disc for smoky Saturday nights, and rainy Sunday mornings. --Ben Heege
Rolling Stone, 7/30/04
Hot Songwriter: Ray LaMontagne. Meet the backwoods Van Morrison
His sandpaper croon sounds like church, Van Morrison and dusty porches.
About the Artist
From Rolling Stone (7/30/04):
Many years ago, before he had learned to sing, written a song or had become the object of a major-label bidding war, Ray LaMontagne was, as usual, awakened at 4:30 a.m. by his clock radio. It was playing a song that changed his life: Stephen Stills' "Treetop Flyer." That day, LaMontagne blew off his job at a Lewiston, Maine, shoe factory to hunt down the 1991 album Stills Alone. "I was in a very dark place and very self-destructive and very close to killing myself in various ways," says the thirty-one-year-old folk singer. After he found the Stills record, he started digging into Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Ray Charles. "It was like I found a religion," he says. "I realized that you could take all this stuff that's making you miserable and turn it into something beautiful."
"When I started singing," he says, "it was weird, because I was an introverted person. At first I just whispered." LaMontagne recently left the rural-Maine log cabin he built and had lived in with his wife and two kids for the past five years. "Life is changing," he says with disarming understatement.
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