Richmond Fontaine - 'We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River' (Decor) Released 17/08/09

After the half-heartbreak, half-barroom brawl blast of ‘Post to Wire’ (2004) and 2005’s uncompromisingly bleak, starkly beautiful ‘The Fitzgerald’, Richmond Fontaine were faced with an impossible – if fortunate – dilemma. How do you follow up not just one but two masterpieces?

2007’s ‘Thirteen Cities’ attempted to solve the puzzle by drifting into Calexico’s mariachi/Western territory, with results that’d have been a triumph for just about anyone, apart from the band recently credited for rejuvenating modern Americana twice in a row. Whilst it’d be unfair to call ‘We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded like a River’ a return to form, as Richmond Fontaine never really fell off the pedestal, the album – the band’s eight studio outing – resembles ‘Post to Wire’ with the confidence and skill with which it hops across vast stylistic gaps with effortless ease. These 14 tracks make a virtue of the Portland quartet’s flexibility, with an expansive, from subdued whisper to amp-abusing decibel binge range that makes mockery of the narrow hoedown mode favoured by most outfits in the alt. country bracket Richmond Fontaine’s habitually – and maybe unfairly - lobbed in. In many ways, it’s a natural culmination of the four-piece’s trek from the outer reaches of the US alt. country margins to their current, much-revered cult act status.

Willy Vlautin’s remarkable lyrics remain the band’s trump card, his ability to capture entirely believable characters struggling through lives in the process of disintegrating with a handful of brief lines, the harshness of the subject matter softened by sympathy and wary hope, undimmed by the singer-guitarist’s ongoing, much-acclaimed sideline as a novelist. But now more than ever, the music deserves an equal billing with the masterful storytelling. The way the mournfulness of the title track – a young couple’s idyll is shattered by an unwanted intrusion from the outside world – is accentuated by a few muted accompaniments (a deliciously twangy guitar lick, brushes working up a weary pulse, barely-there piano) is truly stunning. The sweetly sad spoken word opus ‘Letter to the Patron Saint of Nurses’ is almost as impressive, as is the trumpet that peps up ‘The Boyfriends’ account of unstable lives. Muscle-flexing rockers ‘You Can Move Back Here’ and ‘Lonnie’ hit a perfect halfway point between desperation and beers-aloft jubilation, whilst desolate folk laments ‘Ruby and Lou’ and ‘The Pull’ showcase the band at their tender best, the latter’s cello-enhanced account of a lonesome addict’s relentless race away from the bottle being particularly bruising stuff.