Richmond Fontaine
Richmond Fontaine should need little introduction to fans of the Americana genre, but with their last few albums all deemed masterpieces across the full spectrum of the wider music press, they’ve ultimately stepped well beyond that niche and staked their claim as one of America’s most impressive bands.
As the laureate of the lost, the lonely, and the rootless, frontman Willy Vlautin has been refered to by The Sun as an equal songwriter to Tom Waits and Springsteen. His rough worn vocals expose both a self-vulnerability and a sense of compassion for others, and he has an agility with words in which, often using just a few stanzas or sentences, he can capture a complete character or whole situation. Owing a debt on one side to such songwriters as Paul Westerberg, The Boss and Dave Alvin, and on the other to authors such as Charles Bukowski, John Fante and John Steinbeck, his song writing comes from a school of bleak realism, which in recent times has also spilled out across two well received novels.
Daring, adventurous, literate, and consummate. Richmond Fontaine have established themselves as torch-bearers of the alt. country genre. But they’re much more than that.
“some of the most emotionally sincere music around” The Guardian
“The Dylan of the dislocated” 5/5 The Independent
Richmond Fontaine is performing on Saturday September 5th at the ‘Across The Borders’ festival.
Vist Richmond Fontaine’s MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/richmondfontaine
Click here for tickets http://www.rct-arts.co.uk