Richmond Fontaine
Lost Son (Cavity Search)
by Jon Sarre
Although they may run a distant second in the race for the hearts of Pacific NorthWest alt-country fans to Fernando Viciconte’s self-monkiered outfit (and I’ll bet ya didn’t even know there was such a contest), many well-read in the tales of Larry Brown and various other Falkner mystique wanna-be boys’n’girls will find a soft spot in their lobes (and maybe guts, too) for Richmond Fontaine‘s Cascadian-Gothic Green River Killer campfire poetry set to jumpy too-much-so-to-be-Country-uh-call-it-alt-Gram-Parsons whatchamacallit. Lead guy Willy Vlautin may sound like a fourteen year-old tryin’ to imitate the whiskey’n’smoke-scarred wail of a lost Delta bluelip preserved on an ancient 78, but his localized Big Foot land stories ’bout booze, drugs, oddball lowlifes, often specific units of currency ($1400 on “Cascade,” $300 and $200 on “Fifteen Year Old Kid in Nogales, Mexico,” “thirty dollar bill” on “Pinkerton”) and several different lengths of time (days, hours, years, etc) have a certain creepy appeal, similar to that of Twin Peaks (which some guy down in Medford, OR by the California border once referred to as “a sitcom,” uh huh), so with Vlautin bein’ a good yarn spinner, one can deal with the fact that he doesn’t sound all that world-weary.
(PO Box 42246 Portland, OR 97242)