Masters of the disaffected down and out, purveyors of the most heartbreaking alt. country music out there, and possessors of one of the finest lyricists in America, Richmond Fontaine celebrate 15 years of making music with ‘You Can Move Back Here’, the first single from forthcoming 8th studio album – the characteristically poignantly titled We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River.
Call it alt. country, call it Americana, call it American folk music, whatever it is they do, there can be little doubt that Willy Vlautin and his band have been doing it better than pretty much anyone else around for many years, and this two track, hand-screenprinted 7” vinyl single, complete with a Vlautin (also author of two critically acclaimed novels) short story, seems to confirm that, like one of Willy’s beloved race horses, they are not ready to be put out to stud quite yet.
With the yearning elongated vowels of its standout chorus, ‘You Can Move Back Here’ sounds immediately like a classic country rock song, and could well fit on Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac or Wilco’s Summerteeth – or in terms of Richmond Fontaine, harks back to some of the poppier moments of the seminal Post To Wire. The chorus actually also seems to give something of a nod to the sounds of ‘80s A.M radio alt. rock, most noticeably Reckoning-era R.E.M. The song built around this chorus is far from “pop”, though, and reveals a distinctively bittersweet Richmond Fontaine stamp, particularly the central “At least you’ll have the Western sky and me on your side” refrain.
Lyrically it is on the lighter side of Vlautin’s often jet black stuff, being based around the pull of home to someone who has moved to the big city “alone with neighbours on every side”. Though the positivity of the friend’s “we all miss ya” call to come home is immediately cut down by some of Vlautin’s typical pathos-inducing anti-sentiment, proclaiming “you don’t have to be anything here”. Either way, ‘You Can Move Back Here’ drifts easily into your head from first listen and stays there, and if it doesn’t make you want to move home too, it might just make you want to book the first flight over to the band’s hometown of Portland.
Opening with the heartbreaking couplet “I’m sorry, something’s always been broken inside of me / I know you didn’t think it was true, but now you know it too”, the all-too-brief fingerpicked B-side ‘Now You Know It Too’ is a striking accompaniment to the lead track, and is essentially a distillation of everything that is great about the darker side of Richmond Fontaine in under ten lines.
In the context of some of their best moments over a string of superb Americana albums, ‘You Can Move Back Here’ might well not be the best song Richmond Fontaine have ever recorded, but it remains a catchy slow burner that whets the appetite perfectly for We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River. The only disappointment is that, at under 3 minutes, there just ain’t enough of it.
****
First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
