Ray Lamontagne and his band walked onto the Hammersmith Apollo’s stage in darkness and waited for the lights to go on. When they did, we could see Ray was wearing his usual beard, jeans and shirt. But he also had on a “Mr Happy” t-shirt. Without a hello, a smile or anything else he went straight into the first song.
It was “Be Here Now” off his second album “Till The Sun Turns Black”, which crept into the shops with little announcement a short while ago. That famous voice of his is way up in the mix, crystal clear, but still hushed, dry and powdery like he’s singing a lullaby to his deaf uncle. The next three songs are all new, then he hits us with a few oldies, which the crowd respond to with more enthusiasm.
He still hasn’t said anything at this point. The Apollo is a huge venue. It’s freezing, and there’s little warmth emanating from the stage save the tones of the pedal steel which gives nearly every song tonight a bit of barroom nostalgia. But the venue is big, and I’ve seen extremely charismatic singers here struggle to fill it. Ray gives us nothing, and it’s hard to work out if it’s a stance o if he really doesn’t care, as we’ve been led to believe.
Eventually the nagging heckles for old stuff seems to get to him, and he makes a beautifully quiet, measured threat to whoever it was that if they came down to the stage he’d give him something, ok? Completely deadpan, it had us all in stitches. He really could be the Ernie Wise of rootsy blues music.
When a breaks into Trouble and Three More Days the voice turns from a hoarse whisper to a belting great roar. It’s scary that his wiry frame produces such a thunderous, biblical, deafening noise. It’s fantastic. Three More Days in particular has got so much boogie it doesn’t know what to do with itself.
He plays for an hour and a half, and I don’t think I’ve ever known a gig to fly by so quickly. He must have played the majority of both albums. After each of the last four songs a member of the band drifts away and backstage, with a brief introduction from Ray and a ripple of applause, until we’re left with just the man himself. He hesitantly thanks everyone for coming, straining to find the words and sound sincere. Then he finished with a mesmeric version of Jolene, drawing from seemingly endless wells of heartbreak.
A fine singer, a fine gig, and an enigmatic man who both rocks and rolls and sometimes does neither.