Ray LaMontagne Doesn’t Give A Flying Fuck
2018’s Part of the Light tour has proven to be an interesting one for Ray. This is the first tour he’s done in which he’s begun playing shows without any songs from his first four albums.
During his recent San Diego set, fans repeatedly requested ‘Jolene’, to which Ray responded, “aren’t you guys sick of hearing it? I am.” Some began leaving in droves, knowing that their singalong sessions to ‘Trouble’ and ‘You Are the Best Thing’ were bust. The same thing seems to have happened on subsequent nights.
Ray’s exasperation with his own fans began noticeably during his Supernova tour, which was a much more electronic affair than any of his previous live shows. Fans heckled him endlessly to go acoustic again. While he still proudly stands by the recorded work on Supernova (produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys), he’s aware that his fans were not enthused by the sonic shift.
“I had just gotten off the road touring real hard for Supernova. It was a difficult tour. It was hard. Fans of my music were taken aback a little bit by this side of me for some reason. The intensity of the reaction was something I didn’t expect. It was strange.”
This stands in stark contrast to the ‘God Willin’ and the Creek don’t Rise’ tour prior with his Gossip In the Grain band, The Pariah Dogs. It was by and large his most successful tour — but Ray felt extremely burnt out by the end of it and needed some time away.
I think of the God Willin’ album as Ray’s last great gift to the mass market, knowing that his sustained success since ‘Trouble’ easily gave him the fanbase and the dollars to comfortably move into a more artistic, less commercial path. With the albums that followed — Supernova, Ouroboros and Part of the Light — Ray decided to expand his sonic palette. His musical performances suddenly took on a noticeable psychedelic-rock bent, while Ray’s raspy vocals were filtered and processed into something much smoother and wispier. I’m convinced that the risks Ray’s taken with his newer music have paid off, particularly for him as an artist. I also think artists shouldn’t be afraid to challenge their own fanbase.
Going back to Ray’s live shows and disgruntled longtime fans in attendance, who is in the wrong here? Should Ray be more flexible with his fans and play all the oldies? I mean, they paid a lot for tickets. Or maybe the fans ought to be more flexible with him and let him play his newer material, since it’s more representative of the current stage in his artistic journey?
“I’ve never cared what people’s perceptions of me are, and I really don’t give a flying fuck.”
Ray’s certainly not the first artist to eschew his more popular material for more recent offerings. Feist didn’t play her biggest hit, 1234, for several years. Similarly with Radiohead and their flagship song, Creep. It does come across as somewhat radical that Ray’s chosen to omit from his live set the entire first half of his career, the music that helped propel him to success. When music reaches a certain level of popularity, it stops belonging to the artist per se, and becomes embedded in public consciousness. Wresting it back from the listener can be a tricky situation.
It appears that Ray is trying to make a clear distinction from his earlier, bluesier work, a style which it appears he’s moved away from. His loyalty isn’t so much to his own fans, but to where the muses are taking him as an artist, as I shall explain.
I think Ouroboros was the point in his career when Ray made his artistic convictions crystal clear. He did little to no promotion for that album, trusting that “the real music heads will get it”. Part of its selling point came from the fact that My Morning Jacket was involved with the production and instrumentation on it, but also for the very obvious Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon influence, stylistically and conceptually (Ouroboros is, just like Dark Side, a song cycle).
What’s fascinating about Ray is his approach to songwriting, which he describes as consciousness that makes itself known to him—he’s referenced this in several interviews. Once he went 6 to 7 months without picking up his guitar, because nothing was calling out to him to write music. With Ray’s newer projects, he’s made it a point to ‘get out of the way’ of the music, unlike his first two records, which he in retrospect feels like he ‘manhandled’ too much. This process sounds similar to another artist that I respect greatly, Tori Amos — who describes her songs as living beings — women — who only reveal themselves to her in fragments.
In both these cases, the artist is merely a channel to interpret these small bits of frequency (a word used by Tori). Ray and Tori are both aware that to receive these flashes of consciousness, their minds need to be kept open to the muses, and it is not about their egos contriving the creative songwriting process. This is consistent with Ray’s description of how Ouroboros was written, the concept of which came to him in a dream.
Ray’s new album Part of the Light feels like he’s starting over as an artist, and he’s gone back to being his own producer, too. It’s an album without the stylistic or structural conceit of his last string of releases, showcasing a remarkably more self-assured perspective. It almost sounds like he’s finally acknowledging himself as a person, without being swallowed by self-pity and helplessness. There are all sorts of rock, folk and contemporary influences on this album — an album crafted to please even the most discerning of music appreciators. This focused, updated sound is the reason I feel Ray’s left-turns on his last two albums have really paid off — the work here is rock solid.
This new, more confident Ray is the version of himself he wants to be remembered for. It seems like nearly two decades on as a songwriter, he’s finally found his own voice. He’s shedding his old skin and he’s trudging on, with or without the longtime fans, knowing that there’s bound to be some of us who’ll get it.
Stream clips of Ray Lamontagne’s Part of the Light below.
