RICHMOND FONTAINE have a new album, but it is like nothing they have created before. It is a mix of story, monologue, radio play, novel, and concept album. It is The High Country.
The Portland, Oregon, band play the Róisín Dubh on Tuesday November 8 at 8pm where they will perform the new album in its entirety, and be joined on-stage by Amy Boone of Texan duo The Damnations. Amy will perform the parts of The High Country’s female character.
The band have enjoyed much acclaim for their albums Post To Wire (2004 ), The Fitzgerald (2006 ), Thirteen Cities (2007 ), and We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River (2009 ), while Willy has also written the novels The Motel Life, Northline, and Lean on Pete, which won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction.
In The High Country, Vlautin has brought both these artforms together. It is a narrative concept album about a mechanic who falls in love with the girl who works in the auto parts store. However their plans for the future are threatened by the violent jealousy of another young man who wants the girl for himself.
“The High Country is about being stuck in a small town and stuck in a situation and the difficulties of getting out of it,” Willy told me when I interviewed him earlier this year.
Instead of the story being told entirely through song, a la Pink Floyd’s The Wall or The Who’s Tommy, the narrative is related through a mixture of songs; monologues with musical accompaniment; or songs linked by radio-play like segments where two or three characters argue, talk, or ponder their actions.
“Me and the guys in Richmond Fontaine meet regularly in a bar to plan out what we’re doing for the coming months and I told them about the idea for the new album,” says Willy. “They thought I was crazy! ‘Has he lost his f*****g mind this time?’ but making the album was the most fun we ever had as a band. We all got excited about it as it is eccentric and avant garde for us and an opportunity to do something different.”
Willy knows the album will be challenging for listeners given its unorthodox structure, but there is no doubt he believes it is the ideal way to communicate his story.
“I wanted The High Country to be linear and to make sense, because I love The Who’s Quadrophenia but it never made sense until I saw the movie,” he says. “You will either listen to it once or else you will feel that it’s like a movie and you will want to know what happens to the girl and be rooting for her and you will come back to it again and again for the story.”
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and www.roisindubh.net
