inter connectivity and Richmond Fontaine

A couple of days ago I picked up Richmond Fontaine’s 13 Cities on sale. The last album I bought of theirs which was my first was, The Fitzgerald, even though they’ve been going since the mid 90s.

I read good things about The Fitzgerald and thought that I would get it in the US, in fact it was just before I had left for a conference in Dallas and I had imagined that I would have been able to track down most of their back catalogue as well but as it turned out they never heard of Richmond Fontaine.

On route back home, I went into the Virgin store in Heathrow and to my surprise I found the album.

As I was browsing with it in my hand one of the assistants who was my age, enquired if I had heard the latest Tindersticks noticing that I had the Richmond Fontaine album. He told me that he had recently saw them play live and that it was quite brilliant; I bought the Fitzgerald, as I already had the Tindersticks. It was ironic that the one person with a sound knowledge of ‘Americana’ worked in an ‘in-transit’ record store in the UK where as nobody in Dallas knew what I was talking about when I asked them about Richmond Fontaine.

I gave up trying to find more Richmond Fontaine but yesterday our paths crossed again. Thirteen Cities feels like a continuation of where the Fitzgerald left off even though there’s an album between these releases. If you close your eyes, you feel like you are caught up in the mid western lives of the characters which are so vividly being described in these three minute songs.

In an office it’s an escape especially with your head phones on as it affords you a mental retreat to an alternate reality.

I have always loved the warmth of their music and the richness of the lyrics even if the subject matter is far from easy, still, it is beautifully and transiently described, as much of it poetically, articulates a sense of drifting.

Today is the second day in a row that I have my Richmond Fontaine albums with me, it’s bitterly cold and I’m feeling isolated and they make sense – and once again I’m wondering if it was meant to be, that our paths have crossed and realities have once more become entwined when I least expected it.

And then the music mutes all thought and all I’m feeling is the melody.

July 2009