Musicblock

Notoriously private singer-songwriter Ray laMontagne has released his 6th studio album, the gorgeous ‘Ouroboros’. It is recorded in two parts and deserves to be listened to in its entirety.

I happened upon this last week while walking through the fields on the outskirts of a small town. Being early March we are in the baton change of the seasons and the hazy feel and pastoral lyrics were a perfect accompaniment to the scenery.

I think this is the best thing laMontagne has done. It’s also a little bit Pink Floyd-ish in Part Two which just adds to the nostalgic feel.

Ray laMontagne has always kept a low profile. He rarely does interviews but I found this one with Rolling Stone magazine. Here’s an excerpt that sums up the man:

You’re on a major label, but you seem to like to keep a low profile. Do you keep up with the popular music world, like, say, watching the Grammys?

No, no. I’m not interested. It’s not my world. I really have a lot of respect for music, the art form of music. It’s my whole life. I don’t care about any of that other stuff. And I have always felt that way. I’ll build a career on my own merits, my own hard work and nothing else. The record, as I say, as a whole, is so different from that one snippet that’s out there. It’s not represented, really. The record really has a beautiful arc to it and a beautiful flow, and the texture is like a story. It’s very circular. 

All I can do really is just hope that the real music heads out there will get it. This is a record made for them. It’s not made for casual listeners. That’s the challenging part of it. It’s really made for people who still love to put on a record and hear it through and really go in. We were listening to it in the studio — when we were finished we brought in a bunch of friends and put it on. Nobody said a word for 40 minutes. At the end of it, we turned the lights back on and everyone just came out of this daze. It really works. I think this is going to be one of those albums that’s going to find its way slowly into the right people’s hands.

Now it’s in your hands.