Ray LaMontagne is a new American singer from New Hampshire. At a recent London show, armed with no more than a backwoods beard, an acoustic guitar and an amazing voice, he silenced a room full of gabby, gossipy music-biz types, which is no mean feat. But, as his voice — a keening, grainy instrument that somehow manages to be both whisper and howl at the same time — and the songs on his superb debut album, Trouble, demonstrate, LaMontagne is simply too special to be talked over.
Talked about, maybe. Sure enough, the buzz is building to a roar.
Who does he sound like?
The 10 tracks on Trouble sound like the work of a songwriter who has spent his adolescence immersed in the work of Dylan, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, CSN&Y and Elliott Smith. In fact, LaMontagne’s impoverished, off-the-map childhood — much of which was spent with his mother and five siblings, moving between a succession of camp sites, back yards, car and trailer parks, and chicken coops — meant he was able to reach a stage of suicidal despair a few years back and find salvation in an album by an artist he had never heard of before: Stephen Stills.
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And where does that extraordinary voice come from?
“I taught myself to sing from the gut and not from the nose,” he says.
When’s the record out?
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Trouble is released tomorrow on Echo.
Can I see him live?
UK dates in early November will be announced shortly.