Customer Reviews

Till the Sun Turns Black [Vinyl]

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ray Lamontagne's new album TILL THE SUN TURNS BLACK makes a solid follow up to his great 2004 debut TROUBLE. TROUBLE introduced a singer who was favorably compared to such heavy weights as Van Morrison and Otis Redding.

While TROUBLE hit you over the head with it's great title track and then continued with some songs in a similar mode, the new album is a different beast altogether. TILL THE SUN TURNS BLACK moves at a slow simmer, rising only above a whisper on a couple of tunes. Despite it's subtlety, this album packs the same emotional punch as its predecessor. Lamontagne's songs are floated on quiet string and brass arrangements with acoustic guitar and stirring vocals to create a music that falls somewhere between the blues and the music of Nick Drake. It all shadows and smoke.

Fans of TROUBLE will no doubt find much to like here, but will need to approach this new release with patience. A point of reference for existing fans would be TROUBLE's closing track ALL THE WILD HORSES. It is an album that will reward the listener with more depth each time they play it.

"Ray LaMontagne, a Jesus-esqu man just stood there singing with an ever-so-slightly sway his only movements. How perplexing, right? The point to this confession is that LaMontagne's gently gruff voice is entertainment enough. He's got this pitch and depth that seep in through your ears and make you feel like he's singing just over your shoulder. Not in a sexy kind of way, but in a soulful whisper kind of way." Interview for Rough Mix.

Ray Lamontagne has defied the odds and has turned his second CD into an eclectic mix of tunes that are awe-inspiring. He has been able to open up his wounds so to speak and displays them with minimum words. It is impossible not to feel an instant rapport with Ray LaMontagne. His whispered singing invites us closer to hear each word, and the musical delivery is smooth as silk. The tunes are beautiful and rich, and we hear in them the pain and the oft times joy that invade his soul. and then ours.

Twelve songs penned by Ray LaMontagne. I heard him on NPR with Scott Simon. A very soft voice and sometimes I wish he would speak up. He tells us he had difficulty relating to people until after he was 24. He doesn't explain, it was just that way. He lives with his family in Maine, and we know that he worked in a mill until one day he awoke, heard a song and knew instantly he needed to leave and felt an urge to write and sing. He will not talk about his family. That is his right. His soul is the one on display.

"Be Here Now"- simple enough, a somber work that paves the way for what is to come. Lovely,lyrical music-"Don't let your soul get lonely"

"Empty"-breathless rendition "Let go of my pain, look my demons in the eyes. Been to Hell and back so many times". Lovely guitar riffs. My favorite of them all, but it is so hard to choose.

"Barfly"- "Just a barfly, baby, uh huh" Low whispers, acoustic guitar. Just lovely.

"3 More Days"- that says it all, simply put-" 3 more days, girl, you know I will be coming home ". A deep groove that finds a connection between him and us.

"Can I Stay"-a loving refrain repeated over and over with an acoustic guitar background. "Rhyming tune, darling".

"You Can Brig Me Flowers"- "When I Am dead and Gone", one of my favorite of these new tunes. Bluesy/jazz.

"Gone Away From Me"- a Van Morrison like tune that opens the door. "For awhile I sat there staring at her photograph, now it's gone away from me".

"Lesson Learned"- "That I could have chosen another over her. You always said I was an actor, baby. I wear the brand of traitor, when I was so obviously framed." Lies and truths.

"Truly, Madly, Deeply"- is this love? Quietly , hopefully..

"Til The Sun Turns Black"- Can you see the young and the old pushing their grocery carts through the park? Can you see the old man talking on the telephone til the sun turns black? Times goes slowly til the sun turns black"

"Without You"- ` A Beatle-like reminiscence, "Love,la,la ,ah, ah, ah , aha"


This may be the album of the year for me. Every tune is a must hear again and again. The music and lyrics are so in-tune with Ray LaMontange's whispery voice. They seem to be part of the same universe. Quietness and darkness permeate this CD. Esquire Magazine says it simply" His songs are grand mansions built on crumbling foundations, haunting tunes that document the propensity for real love. He'll be a superstar alright"

Highly, highly, highly recommended. prisrob 8-29-06

Sounding like a combination of southern rocker, singer-songwriter, and acoustic balladeer, it's rather surprising to learn Ray LaMontagne comes from New Hampshire. If you haven't heard his debut album "Trouble", then you will be picking it up soon once you hear his excellent second studio album, Til The Sun Turns Black. From the elegant opening bars of "Be Here Now" and the first gravely, rumbling vocals, you understand you are hearing real, unique talent. If you can fall in love with an artist after 2 songs, then this is one of those albums.

"Be Here Now" mixes a strong acoustic guitar melody with atmospheric strings that ebb and flow with the song's moods. LaMontagne's perfect voice is the glue holding the disparate elements together, a plaintive call to a lover (perhaps lost?). This song alone made me a fan. "Empty" is a Tom Petty-ish mid-tempo acoustic rocker with strings, as his elegantly poetic lyrics describe a world he is searching for. With his wild hair and bushy beard, LaMontagne looks as if he stepped off the stage in the 1970's, and his music certainly evokes that time. "Barfly" is a simple acoustic ode to a woman, "kiss me before you go...I'm going nowhere baby", with a soft harmony provided by singer Rachael Yamagata. Though he intertwines themes of loneliness and loss with love and hope, no songs feel depressing or dark; Ray's voice possesses so much life that you sense he sings with a wry detachment.

"Three More Days" takes in some keyboards and a southern blues drum beat, and lays LaMontagne's plaintive voice over the top "three more days...girl you know I'll be right there by your side baby..I can bring it on home..." Some well-mixed horns give the song some added life, but this is the most southern sounding of all the songs. "Can I Stay" is a James Taylor sounding ballad, "there is nothing I want more except to wake up on your floor", while "You Can Bring Me Flowers" incorporates some jazzy horns with a up-tempo electric guitar. "Gone Away From Me" is reminiscent of a funkier version of Chris Isaac. "Lesson Learned" and "Truly, Madly, Deeply" are soft ballads, and "Til the Sun Turns Black" echoes back to "Be Here Now" with its soft vocals, strings, and acoustic guitar. "Within You" is a upbeat closing track that fits the overall mood of the album and sends it off gently.

Despite its 44 minute running time, this album packs a punch of emotion and poetic lyrics. Ethan Johns did an excellent job keeping LaMontagne's voice as an instrument, its gravel rawness blended perfectly with acoustic and electric guitar, strings, and horns. This was an album that builds on the success of his debut Trouble, and demonstrates again that the gift of the singer-songwriter comes from within. Ray LaMontagne of New Hampshire and Lewiston, Maine has a unique gift, and was kind enough to share it with us. This is a must hear album, and on my Top 5 for 2006. Pick this one up today.

A.G. Corwin
St Louis, MO

Till The Sun Turns Black is the second terrific album by singer/songwriter Ray LaMontagne, whose first wonderful album, was Trouble (2004). Ray is not a cheerful or sunny soul (the title should be a hint of that, no?). Rather, like Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Kelly Joe Phelps, he mostly mines the caves of sadness, loss, weariness, lassitude, and sorrow. He sings in a hushed and plaintive voice which is like the far off sounds of a train, mournful and distant. Don't get me wrong, Ray is wonderful to hear, just don't spin this disc if you are already feeling a bit, shall we say, desperate. Or then again, maybe you should. Just maybe his own wretched misery would be enough to make you say, "Hey, at least I don't feel THAT bad." But joking, aside, this album, despite being slightly tarnished by too much fancy strings and orchestral sounding background, has some truly stellar gems.

The song "Empty" is sheer poetry:

"lay your blouse across the chair,
let fall the flowers from your hair
and kiss me with that country mouth, so plain.
outside, the rain is tapping on the leaves,
to me it sounds like they're applauding us the quiet love we made.
will i always feel this way?
so empty, so estranged"

Buy the album for "Empty" but stay and listen to the whole thing. It is well worth it. Thank you Mr. LaMontagne.

I first heard Ray Lamontagne while driving to work in Indianapolis. I was listening to the independently owned radio station broadcasting out of Bloomington and 'Trouble' came out of my two-door Honda's meager speakers. People may question whether love-at-first-sight exists and the discussion can go around the moon and back without a definitive answer but I'll never question falling in love with a song. 'Trouble' became a definitive song in my life and the album as a whole solidified Ray Lamontagne's place among my favorite artists.

So, when I was purchasing a book in a major retail bookstore in downtown Boston, their last-minute-marketing attempts caught me unawares as I stood there looking at Ray's new album. I admit, I'd lost touch and wasn't even aware that a new album was being released! I bought it without a second look and it lived in my bag for over twenty-four hours until I had the opportunity to break it open and listen to it from beginning to end.

First listen: Solid follow-up album that is clearly more-produced that the debut. Initially I felt it might have been a little over-produced with splashes of horn-sections and strings. It was clearly in contrast to the bare-bones, mostly-accoustic debut album.

Second listen: Wait...what's the name of the second track? This song is beautiful! Absolutely haunting and...start it over from the beginning. Resist the temptation to put this one track on repeat. . .

Third listen: This album is not at all overproduced. It's brilliant and, as I would expect, the lyrics and melodies are gorgeous.

And to shamelessly make an allusion to the fourth track, "Three more days" I implore you to give it three more listens if at first you feel ambivalent. This album is a treasure.

There's been a couple of cds I've recently purchased which are follow ups to cds I consider almost impossible to surpass the previous efforts of those performers including Dylan, Bob Schneider, Pete Yorn - and then there's Ray LaMontagne.
To me it would be a nearly impossible task to surpass the briliance of "Trouble", which to me is up there with my favorite CDs of all time.
So I purchased Til The Sun Turns Black with lowered expectations, not thinking it could ever come close to Trouble. But I was wrong, it does come close, and on some songs it surpasses. And what was a very nice surprise is Ray does not try and copy the essence of what made Trouble such a remarkable CD, true this may get catagorized as folk, but it goes off in so many different directions. What remains the same though is the pain in Ray's voice, which it's every bit as beautiful as it was in Trouble.
The standout tracks for me are the opener Be Here Now, Barfly (with Rachael Yamagata sining backup), Can I Stay is absolutely beautiful; Gone Away From Me is reminicent of the Beatles at their best; Lessons Learned, just Ray playing acoustic and Spanish guitar with beautiful lyrics; Truely, Madly Deeply is almost a continuence of the previous song with Ray playing Spanish guitar; Within You is a very "Lennonistic" song which seems to be protesting war and advocating love and peace.
I would highly recommend this cd not only to anyone who enjoyed "Trouble" but to anyone who appreciates great music.

"Can you see the wise man simply living, loving quietly..." so sings Ray LaMontagne on the title track of his latest release Till The Sun Turns Black. It's a lyric, you sense, that is close to the singer-songwriters heart, if not even some sort of personal credo. For Ray LaMontagne and his music are most determinedly not of this ever more frenetic age - and thank goodness for that. It's comforting to know that there are still genuine, unadulterated back-woods musical geniuses out there. LaMontagne's songs seem to naturally embody the same sort of spirit, feel and grain of artists like Otis Redding, Van Morrison, Stephen Stills, and Ray Charles and yet even after just one album, his voice and style are umistakably his own. One listen to Ray LaMontagne and you don't soon forget it. Quite simply, the man moves me, and he also soothes my soul. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this.

It's wonderful to discover then, that after the success of LaMontagne's 2004 debut Trouble, his new songs have lost nothing in the way of their original unpretensious, heart-on-sleeve earthiness. If anything, Till The Sun Turns Black is a touch more somber than Trouble, with a profound sense of melancholy running through even the lighter moments. Songs about hard times, self-doubt, and lost love can generally be relied upon to be compelling, but rarely are they so effortlessly graceful, hauntingly sincere and unutterably beautiful as they are on Till The Sun Turns Black. Aided once more by the brilliant multi-instrumentalist Ethan Johns (it's hard to imagine any other producer for LaMontagne) the two prove beyond all doubt that Trouble was no fluke. It was in fact, only the beginning. Without altering his style drastically, LaMontagne has really broadened his approach here.

The fragile, bewitching Be Here Now opens proceedings, and immediately you are transfixed by waves of cascading piano, guitar, violins, atmospheric touches and LaMontagne himself repeating the title like a man possessed. It's a tremendously moving start, and quite different to anything we've heard from him before - and it gets even better. `Empty' follows, in all of it's broken-down, desolate glory, and it's about as beautiful a Ray LaMontagne song as is possible to imagine. Over stirring, elegant strings the singer sets the scene - " She lifts her skirt up to her knees... walks through the garden rows with her barefeet laughing" before proceeding to knock that pretty image down with a crushing blow - "I've never learned to count my blessings but choose instead to dwell in my disasters". Clearly, the hellhounds on his trail have not been so easy to shake off. Like much of the songwriters work, `Empty' has a truly widescreen, cinematic feel. You could imagine it working brilliantly in a recent film like Brokeback Mountain, or, going back a few years, something like Badlands. More than once during the course of this song, as well as on other tracks like the stirring `Lesson Learned' or the Lennon-esque album closer `Within You' - the thought has struck me - how can one man's voice convey so much feeling? It's not only abundantly present in the soulful timbre of his voice, but also in the way he delivers a line. By turns hesitant, wistful, vulnerable, and impassioned.

It's tempting at this point in my review to go through and dissect each successive track on Till The Sun Turns Black, but I'll spare you all of my gushing praise and leave it for your ears to experience, rather than your eyes. Suffice to say though, whether LaMontagne turns his hand to funky, rump-shaking soul (Three More Days) or simple, unaffected balladry (Can I Stay) or rough-hewn, down & out blues (You Can Bring Me Flowers), the resulting songs, without exception, succeed on all counts. Till The Sun Turns Black is another wonderfully assured step forward for this enigmatic, deeply talented artist.

Highlights: Be Here Now, Empty, Three More Days, Lesson Learned, Till The Sun Turns Black

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I first heard the single "Trouble" on WBOS in Boston. They, and in particular George Knight, were championing him as a New England home-grown singer/songwriter. I was drawn to his voice and talent immediately.

On the CD "Trouble", producer Ethan Johns took Lamontagne's simple guitar songs and, by taking a minimalist approach, gracefully complemented his sound with brush drums and occasional string accompaniements. The product was a sound that highlighted Lamontagne's voice instead of drowning it in overproduction.

On "Till The Sun Turns Black", a brilliant "mood" album, Lamontagne sounds less like the I'm-just-glad-to-be-here newcomer and much more like he's invested in the effort. He is a man possessed with a need to deliver emotion but he does so with a controlled delivery. His vocals are more nuanced than on "Trouble'. They evoke real emotion instead of concern for whether his voice can carry the load.

While "Three More Days", a catchy R&B tune, may seem out of place here, I suspect it was part of a bargain with the record company to deliver at least one radio-friendly track on an otherwise extremely introspective album. At least it's a good song whose opening riffs evoke aural images of Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man".

Although dark and appropriate more for late night headphones than for the drive to work, "Till The Sun Turns Black" is one of the best CD's I've heard in the 2000's. The songs are brilliant and, once again, the production is spare and deferential to the emotions RL's heart is pouring out.

Outstanding work here. RL's a truly unique talent...and he's blessed with restrained production.

The problem is, the moments are few and far between. The best song on this album, by far, is Gone Away From Me and you don't get to it until track 7. Absolutely worth it once you get there though. "Be Here Now" drags on a little too long without changing. "Empty" gave me some hope as it had such a promising sound, but it too didn't hold my interest throughout. I admit, Gone Away From Me doesn't do that much changing throughout it's air time, but the lyrics kept me hooked in... the other songs, not so much. The last song, "Within You" is another good song but it fails to rescue the album as a whole.

I think it's important to read reviews that disagree with your own opinions, so think about it.

I LOVE Ray Montagne - and I loved Trouble (his first album). This second album speaks the truth about finding your answers inside of you! And the songs, from beginning to end, speak of all that occupies the world today. Truly a remarkable and gifted song-writer who sings from his soul.