2007: the snap-pocket shirts, sideburns, literary leanings and pedal steels of alt-country are simply memories from the '90s. Movement hero and harbinger
Jeff Tweedy has led
Wilco far from the decade-old roots rock rusticisms of
Being There, finding purchase in experimental landscapes dotted with the detritus of modern living. Many have forgotten that
Ryan Adams once fronted a marvelous alt-country band called
Whiskeytown, as the bedheaded man-child jettisons off into the pop star stratosphere, bouncing from rock to pop to punk to country (again). Not so for
Richmond Fontaine, who are led by archetypal old-school-styled alt-country hero
Willy Vlautin. The intelligent and slightly shaggy
Vlautin, who has published a successful novel (and whose voice contains the perfect blend of fragility and gravel for this type of fare), writes smart songs -- poetic weepers that ride strains of deep twang and pedal steel and lash sweet pop melodicism to country intonations. For their seventh album,
Thirteen Cities, the Portland, OR band headed into the deserts of Tucson to work for the third time in a row with
J.D. Foster, who is known for producing
Calexico and
Richard Buckner.
Calexico pitch in significantly with horns on the euphoric, sprightly pop-country of the opener, "Moving Back Home #2." Elsewhere, on the busily titled "$87 and a Guilty Conscience That Gets Worse the Longer I Go," sweet cries of pedal steel trail the mini sketches of
Vlautin's narrator, who witnesses enough suffering and depravity (a near-death boxing match, a tractor-trailer crash, a teenage runaway in a sexual tryst) to spur him into the kind of deeply beautiful and downtrodden existential crisis that was once
Tweedy's stock-in-trade (e.g. "Far, Far Away" from
Being There). By the time one gets to "Capsized," whose down-by-luck narrator drifts, sells his possessions, and estranges himself from all palpable life, you begin to get the sense that the deeper
Vlautin plunges his characters into despair, the brighter the twinkle of exultation in his eye. But all would be for naught if he didn't breathe rare life into these literary tales with melodies that often take breathtaking little turns and swoops. With
Thirteen Cities,
Richmond Fontaine employ varnished beauty to exceed the already high-water marks set by 2004's
Post to Wire and 2005's
The Fitzgerald.