#12 Album of 2009: We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River - Richmond Fontaine

We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River

Richmond Fontaine
Decor Records.

SCQ Album Review

Out of complete SCQ obscurity, Richmond Fontaine arrived mid-Summer boasting Willy Vlautin’s Tweedy-in-his-prime drawl and an accomplished yet volatile band harkening back to my love of early Ryan Adams. Unfortunately these comparisons, although honest in how I was drawn to their sound, are pretty insulting - given how Richmond Fontaine have been turning heads since the mid-90s - and sidetrack how extraordinary We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River is. These fourteen songs seem to span a time period – two loaded weeks, six months, maybe a year or two – as Vlautin’s novelist tendencies are strongly imbedded through the dedicated scope of this record. Lower class characters find and lose themselves, tragedies and disappointments distinguish each other and, in the record’s finest moments, Vlautin finds himself in the thick of it.