RICHMOND FONTAINE - The Fitzgerald

Imagine a hotel in the American desert. Reno, Nevada: light years away

from Las Vegas and its illusory temptations, miles and miles from the

smiling chimeras of fame and fortune. Around these parts, the refrain sung by Michael Stipe on the album “Reveal” (“You're

Gonna Be A Star!”) seems to lose all meaning. Indeed, because at the “Fitzgerald Hotel”

no star lives there: only bare, dimly lit $28 rooms,

hardened drinkers and gamblers, small-time crooks, battered

women, desperate gangsters.

It's the American backwater of "natural

born losers" and shattered dreams, arid and dusty. The stuff of metaphysical

westerns, worthy of the pen of a Raymond Carver, a Cormac McCarthy, or at

most a John Fante. Who could carry that same spleen into music?

you'd think of Willard Grant Conspiracy or Smog, but instead it was Willy Vlautin who did it,

born and raised right there in Reno.

Willy is the singer-songwriter, frontman and guitarist

of Richmond Fontaine, one of the finest alt-country outfits of the past

ten years, with a solid following in the US and a small cult fanbase in

England, fueled by specialist publications like Uncut.

Fatally drawn

to the resigned gloom of those corridors, Vlautin spent whole

weeks in a room at the “Fitz” writing lyrics for the band's new, sixth album.

The basic idea was to move away from the robust rock of

the previous “Post To Wire”, from its influences (Uncle Tupelo, X, Replacements, Long Ryders, Blasters) and

its trademark sounds (distortion and pedal steel guitar). No room for

mid- or up-tempo numbers, replaced this time by slow, strongly “narrative” and

cinematic dynamics. The drums are merely brushed, the guitars are acoustic

(the electric guitar appears only sparingly, serving the mood rather than

ai riffs), minimal like the other contributions of piano, violin, harmonica and

accordion.

Beyond the stylistic/vocal echoes (on one side the

Springsteen of “Nebraska”,

on the other the early Tom Waits), “The

Fitzgerald” strikes for its interpretive dryness, the

linear yet captivating country/folk-style arrangements, the lack of natural light throughout

the eleven tracks.

Every story carries the right weight and meaning: Wes,

beaten up by a creditor; Harry, a ghost with a slashed face; the ghost

of Francine, a longed-for love never found again. “They sleep, they sleep on the

hill,” Fabrizio De

André would have said.

Here there's only desert and whisky bottles. The mastery of Willy

and the Richmond Fontane lies in bringing these fates back to life, setting them to music in

“concept album” in the old storyteller's tradition, rendering all the

intoxicating noir sadness of episodes like “Black Road” or “Disappeared”.

The close attention to characters and details is striking: it's no surprise, then,

to learn of a publishing deal offered to Willy for his debut in

novel form.

Kudos to Richmond Fontaine: they knew how to take a risk

with this change of direction, showing character and personality. “The Fitzgerald” is among

the best American records of 2005. Our personal advice is to

listen to the album on headphones, lingering over the lyrics reproduced in the booklet:

the positive impression will only grow with time. Let yourself be carried away, the wind

and the dust will do the rest.

Ride the wave of great music

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30/04/2026