DCup featured a song by Ray LaMontagne today, and sitting and listening to it, I just felt the need. When I first heard him on PRI's "World Cafe" a few years back, right after the release of Trouble, I was absolutely blown away. The first time I heard "Shelter" and I knew there was something transcendent about this man. He is on his third "official" release, and his sound has morphed slightly from the rough six-string sounds of 60's folk music to the rough, gritty horn sounds of the Stax/Volt/Muscle Shoals sound, especially in records made for Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin. Yet, punching through the sound is the voice and the words - direct, stripped bare of artifice and pretense. This is art and poetry and music as it should be. If you haven't heard him yet, please listen. If you have heard him, and have yet to realize what a gift he has, and is sharing with the world, I urge you to listen again.
From a BBC session, this is an extended version of "Shelter/Hold You In My Arms"
When all of this around us falls over
Tell you what we're gonna do
You will shelter me, my love,
And I will shelter you.
The first track off Until The Sun Turns Black, "Be Here Now"
From his latest release, Gossip In The Grain, this is "You Are The Best Thing"
Virtual Tin Cup
