It would be easy to dismiss this mini album/ep as a mere cash-in afterthought, containing as it does six unreleased tracks from the sessions that produced their last album, Thirteen Cities, and a couple of tagged-on extras. Easy, that is, if it weren’t completely brilliant.

Though they fall in line with the Americana/alt country mood that that had produced so many solid bands and artists over the last couple of years (Ryan Adams, Wilco, Willy Mason, Bright Eyes to name but a few), Richmond Fontaine manage to stand out by sheer brute quality. Though sometimes the whisky soaked croak of lyricist Willy Vlautin tends to wheeze out countrified clichés (occasionally it’s as though he’s simply listing lonely-sounding American towns), there’s an intangible presence to his voice that makes you do more than listen, it makes you really believe. It only takes a couple of lines to evoke a whole sprawling patchwork landscape of drifters, drunks, and endless highways stretched out under smoky skies, whilst at the same time pulling you in to a sudden narrative so sharp it cuts to the core (My roommate was sleeping. I took his keys, and a hundred bucks. Headed out till his car broke down, outside of Tousanne). This is a songwriter who hasn’t just been compared to legends like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, he’s been compared to the great American novelists, Raymond Carver, John Steinbeck, and Charles Bukowski. Now that’s heavyweight class.

If you were ever duped into the ridiculous hype surrounding Cold War Kids, make amends by switching to this. Richmond Fontaine are the overlooked but infinitely superior underdogs, singing out their poignant songs from the bottom of a broken bottle and the dark heart of a broken continent.

Josh Farrington

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