Richmond Fontaine - Thirteen Cities flac album

Richmond Fontaine first gained exposure outside the USA through a song that was included on a Vinyl Junkie Records 'Loose' compilation released in the UK. This was followed by the band's self-released fourth album, Winnemucca. The band signed with Decor Records in Europe during 2003 with their next two releases proving pivotal to the band's success. Both were made "Albums of the Month" in influential magazine, Uncut, which named both their fifth album Post to Wire (2004) and sixth The Fitzgerald (2005) "masterpieces".

Unfortunately, Thirteen Cities then rather inexplicably runs out of ideas. The remaining tracks fall somewhere between the exuberantly melodic road trip blues of Post To Wire and the sparser, folkier intimacy of The Fitzgerald, but without being as good as either. Part of the problem is singer and band leader Willy Vlautin. As a result, the concept of a vivid, atmospheric tour around the disappearing American West is never fully realised, and Richmond Fontaine, while still delivering an accomplished album, fail to hit the heady heights of their last two works. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

Willy Vlautin, chief song writer and front man for Portland alt country act Richmond Fontaine, is one of those hyper-creative artists equally prolific in a number of different mediums; in the last ten years he’s released five albums with Richmond Fontaine, another with his female-fronted country soul outfit The Delines and he's also found time to write four acclaimed.