Consumer Guide Album

Richmond Fontaine: Winnemucca [El Cortez, 2002]
I know "saddest album ever made" isn't much of a sell line, especially from a judge who may never fully penetrate the rest of the forlorn catalogue of Willy Vlautin's signature band. But I guarantee that this one's so well put together it'll lure you to play it over and over. Pretty impressive how tentative hopes like "At least for a while we are out of state/Out of that state" and "And if it's somewhere, somewhere near/Well at least it's not here" are dragged down by vocals that fend off depression line by line, how the instrumental "Patty's Retreat" disintegrates into a chaos guaranteed to drive Americana sentimentalists back into their history-at-a-distance. And "Five Degrees Below Zero," when Ray Thaves stops the bus in the middle of the desert night and walks in the opposite direction from the Vegas lights without even a coat on, is a suicide you can get with. A−