Richmond Fontaine

The Portland-based rock band is headed-up by Reno native Willy Vlautin, and its sixth CD is a quieter acoustic take on his lyrics than their previous albums. Willy holed up in a room at the Fitzgerald for two weeks and wrote the songs—a series of stark, troubling portraits of life on the edges of everything: claims to sanity that have been battered and bruised, the dark around the edges of bright lights. Vlautin’s stories and affinities are more in line with Larry Brown, Ray Carver and Denis Johnson than your usual rock songwriter, which is probably why his first novel will be published in England next spring. He looks with an unflinching eye for the telling detail.