Search - Richmond Fontaine :: The High Country

Richmond Fontaine's tenth studio album, The High Country, tells an operatically tragic tale. Songwriter and novelist Willy Vlautin has written an extraordinarily eccentric album like no other. More than a concept record, The High Country is a song-novel: a fully realized, novel-sized story set to music. Set in a rural logging community in Oregon, The High Country is a Gothic love story between a mechanic and an auto parts store counter girl, whose secret love inspires an effort to escape the darkness of the world that surrounds them -- drugs, violence, madness, loneliness, and desperation set against a backdrop of endless logging roads and the remains of a forest brutalized by logging. In this story of light vs. dark, Vlautin has woven a tale where screw-ups and freaks demonize the lives of innocents.The High Country features Richmond Fontaine members Dan Eccles (guitar), Dave Harding (bass, guitar, vocals), Sean Oldham (percussion, keyboards, guitar, vocals) and Willy Vlautin (vocals, guitar) joined by The Damnations' Deborah Kelly (lead vocals on four songs) and Fontaine regulars Paul Brainard (pedal steel), Ralph Huntley (keyboards, accordion) and Collin Oldham (cello, cellomobo). Producer and film scorer John Askew brings his knack for creating atmosphere and sonic depth to the record.