Ray LaMontagne

Bushy-bearded troubadour Ray LaMontagne shouldn't lose any fans with Till the Sun Turns Black, his follow-up to 2004's Trouble. He strikes a careful balance between casting a broader net and reworking/refining the same sort of universally appealing fare that he and producer Ethan Johns tapped into on his debut. If there is an artist tailor-made for the midnight hour of a road trip, or for the 35-year-old inside all of us, LaMontagne could very well be it.

Like a rougher-around-the-edges Amos Lee or Ben Harper, LaMontagne sings songs that mix world-weariness with determined longing. "See, I been to Hell and back so many times, I must admit you kind of bore me," he sings on "Empty," one of the album's best tracks. Johns, as also evidenced by his work as a studio shepherd for Ryan Adams, is an expert at drawing maximum effect from this sort of hushed darkness and underplayed melancholy. There's a propulsiveness and edge to "Empty" that is lacking on most of the rest of Till the Sun Turns Black, even if the album is seldom anything less than pleasant-sounding.

Unfortunately, the air of dark mystery is sometimes subverted by LaMontagne's other musical alter egos. The first of these Mr. Hydes turns up on "Three More Days," the sort of squinty, mushy-mouthed, Joe Cocker variety of white boy soul that Taylor Hicks has tapped into frequently, including when he covered LaMontagne's very own "Trouble." "Three More Days," of course, was pegged as the lead single. Fortunately, it doesn't sound like much else on the album. The more damaging and recurring persona is the soft-voiced singer who sings sweet nothings -- like the sappy, string-drenched "Can I Stay" -- and is sometimes overwhelmed by crowded arrangements, like the over-orchestrated title track.

"Empty" is hardly the lone highlight, though. LaMontagne is an evocative guitarist, and sets an arresting mood with the delicate opener, "Be Here Now," which should become a set list staple. On "Gone Away From Me," he weaves a heartbroken storyline into a subtle but stately song that otherwise sounds like it could be played at weddings. "Lesson Learned" is another effective example of how LaMontagne and Johns use an intimate atmosphere to make the loneliest songs seem somehow simultaneously romantic or even seductive. - Adam McKibbin, The Red Alert

If it weren't for his singing voice, so full of smoke and ether, one would be hard-pressed to believe that Till the Sun Turns Black was made by the same man who recorded Trouble just two years prior to it. Ray LaMontagne takes a brave leap from the rootsy singer/songwriter material of his stellar debut album and goes nearly 180 degrees. Once more collaborating with legendary producer and multi-instrumentalist Ethan Johns, the singer and songwriter turns in a highly textured, atmospheric, and subdued performance on his sophomore effort -- and hell yes that's a good thing. All the grit and earth in LaMontagne's voice on Trouble, and the basic country-folk and even R&B (on the title track) has been swept out the backdoor here. This new set of songs is startling all on its own. The reliance on skeletal yet delicate string arrangements adds so much to the interior nature of these songs. LaMontagne has used the projection in both his lyrics and his voice and turned them inside out. He's slower, more subtle, more restrained in everything he does. His lines are economical, full of space and tension, as if they were being performed in the middle of the night in a room alone. Johns' use of strings and keyboards paints LaMontagne's voice and underscores his sung lines with a drama that reveals itself inside the listener. Whole comparisons to Nick Drake will be forthcoming, no doubt, but it's only really accurate when thinking of Drake in his work with John Cale, who fully and implicitly understood the singer's intent.

Check LaMontagne's opener, "Be Here Now," with the guitar finding its way toward the singer as a quartet of violins, two cellos, and a bowed bass emerge to support his voice in the void of silence Johns creates around it. Johns' piano fills in odd spaces. They don't seem to add up, but they do when LaMontagne's vocal whispers its way forward into that small swell of shadow. Even on tracks like the bluesy "You Can Bring Me Flowers," where a full-blown horn section is used to highlight and extol LaMontagne's tough words; there is more Tim Buckley and Tom Rush here than Redding or Stills, but it's all LaMontagne. The jazzed up flute and funky dobro don't sound like country, but more like country-blues at the Village Vanguard circa 1968. Again, horns come into play on "Gone Away from Me" and let his words spill out, not rattle. The whispering acoustic guitars and strings that usher in the title cut are frames for a voice to fit inside, and LaMontagne's does for a while, he paints himself in and then shatters the frame when the gradually confessed emotion blurs the edges and stress fractures it. These songs are songs no one else can sing. LaMontagne's sense of phrase and rhyme is idiosyncratic and never overbearing, he allows his listeners into his world, slowly, deliberately, until he can no longer bear to keep his observations and nearly overwhelming emotion to himself -- as the strings swell, all he can do is begin to moan, and nearly growl, wordlessly. Till the Sun Turns Black is a giant leap forward for a songwriter who has a lot on offer already. No longer able to be lumped in with the new crop of folk practitioners or the whiny, indie singer/songwriter types who come from disaffected parts of the psyche and disaffect themselves from audiences larger than a few hundred, LaMontagne is a sophisticated pop artist who can find in simple forms something utterly engaging and communicative. This record will not sound dated in 20 years. And indeed it could have been made 20 years ago. There is nothing here that remotely echoes anything his peers might be up to. He's in his own league. One gets the impression that as fine as this music is, he's still feeling his way into it. We can only hope this partnership between LaMontagne and Johns will continue because we will no doubt be surprised at what comes next. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide