Ray LaMontagne—no stranger to criticism. Never the darling of young folk’s radio. Not the first choice when calling on Alexa for the right vibe to underscore a dinner party. Adult contemporary, but never contemptorary, LaMontagne
is certainly a household name, but like many affable-pop culture 'tweeners, he exists in the Impassable Wilderness of music: he’s too cool
and not cool enough for school. At least, it’s hard to otherwise interpret the sparse, unenthusiastic reactions to
Ouroboros—LaMontagne’s Floyd-aping love letter to classic side-A-and-B records—as anything but disappointment. I mean, the vote splits down the middle: this album is either LaMontagne boring the listener by being too spacey and ambitious, or boring the listener by not being spacey or ambitious
enough. I’m pleased to report that all camps were able to agree that the album is, indeed, a very sleepy album.
I imagine you understand that objectivity in music journalism and discussion is a farce. There are metrics to everybody’s opinion, of course, but the closest you can get to “the truth” is choosing to identify with whatever music measuring-stick you can make sense of: be it production, genre, nostalgia, performance, emotion, culture, or any combination of the above. There isn’t a left or right here, and nobody is wrong for not being thrilled by
Ouroboros. But by my own measuring sticks, I don’t know, the reaction
surprised me. I have a lot of time for what LaMontagne and crew—including, and especially, producer Jim James of My Morning Jacket—created. I was disappointed to see it received like the diet cola of modern progressive records. No,
Ouroboros is a hot bath, folks.
What of LaMontagne’s throaty, bellow-and-whisper vocals: the white-boy soul counterpart of Sam Beam’s gentle murmurings? They’re soaked in double-takes, reverb, and rich harmony—stretched thin at the edge of his vocal break in delicate whimpers. LaMontagne's vocal acts like a cooing dove, playing hide-and-seek behind a waterfall of modulation. His lyrics are washed away in the production, save for a few sparse moments of clarity and clever poetry ("
never gonna hear this song on the radio, but wouldn't it make a lovely photograph?"). But don't rush to the liner notes in a hurry, because none of it really matters. This record, believe you me—it’s window dressing when dissected into parts, but a beautiful view as a whole.
And what of the music? It really
is sleepy. Never in a rush, LaMontagne’s arrangements ploddingly bleed into one another—never changing shape dramatically, but melting rather like snow as ideas are gradually removed from a song as slowly as they were introduced. Harmonies and melodies disappear and reappear—dense and analog—without quantization or correction. ‘
Homecoming’, the meditative 8.5 minute opener, subtly locks itself into a trance late in the tune: a flurry of cascading piano triplets over increasingly frantic brush-kit drums that achieve the same record-skipping novelty of Tame Impala’s ‘
Let It Happen’ without so much as a head-nod towards digital manipulation. Sloppy, fuzzy riff-rock is allowed to exist (‘
Hey, No Pressure,’ ‘
While It Still Beats’) adjacent to spacious balladry that recalls a hybrid of Fleet Foxes and The War on Drugs (‘
In My own Way’, ‘
Another Day’), but both moods are presented as a Jekyll and Hyde of one lumbering beast.
And
Ouroboros, which most certainly
is a beast, feels like it lumbers at 60 beats-per-minute the whole damn time. It is
so unyieldingly sparse and
so unembarrassedly Floyd. It’s a maze of cliches and tropes. This *** ain’t original, no—I mean, Father John Misty has been milking a very similar cow for a few albums now, and every blue-collar singer-songwriter has learned that throwing a towel on their drums and hitting their compressor hard will make for a happy listener. Tillman at least was a little more subtle about it, right? I don’t know. Who cares? It speaks to the beauty of music and its inherent subjectivity—this sleepy, gentle giant of a record did a lot of things wrong in the eyes of many. It also makes me feel special on every listen. Lucky, even. I know why you didn’t like it, and I will support you for feeling the way you do every time—but, well, it’s been four years since
Ouroboros was released, and for me, it has only become more engrossing of a listen ever since.
You might not care for it. I do. Maybe you’ll re-listen one day, and maybe not. Hey—
no pressure.
