Ray Lamontagne | One of the Best of UW 2010

Subtlety has great benefits when employed in any form of expression. And when it's combined with a deep and rich inner life, and revealed in song, well, you may find brilliance. Like the light shining through a billion stars in the dark night.

Ray Lamontagne has made a career album in this year's "God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise", his fourth full-length release. It's most likely a career album that will be matched or supplanted by another one of his records down the road. That's how secure he seems to be in the place he came to with his band The Pariah Dogs as they recorded the album over a two-week period in Lamontagne's home studio in Western Massachusetts. Shades of Neil and Joni. Soaring silence of his heart.

In "Like Rock & Roll & Radio", he oh so gently asks "Are you still in love with me?" and likens the estrangement that he feels with the soulless nature of modern radio. Radio has broken his heart, it seems, with the way it's changed. Will his lover do (has his lover done) the same?

Are you still in love with me
Like the way it used to be or is it changing?
Is it deeper over time
Like the river that is winding through the canyon?

Are we strangers now
Like the Ziegfeld Gal and the Vaudeville Show?
Are we strangers now
Like rock and roll and the radio
Like rock and roll and radio?



Ray Lamontagne's song is part of this this week's Best of Uncharted Waters 2010. Here's the playlist:

Friday/Sunday December 17/19/2010 9 p.m. ET www.mvyradio.com

Best of UW 2010 Part 2

"Corpus Christi Carol/Hammerhead" Jeff Beck Emotion and Commotion Atco
"Terrible Love" The National High Violet 4 AD
"Open Arms" Patty Larkin 25 Vanguard
"Like Rock & Roll and Radio" Ray Lamontagne God Willin' and The Creek Don't Rise RCA
"Lingering Still" She and Him Volume 2 Merge
"Creep Along Moses" Mavis Staples You Are Not Alone Anti-
"Boe Money" Galactic with Rebirth Brass Band Ya-Ka-May Anti-
"Your Night Is Wide Open" Tracy Bonham Masts of Manhatta Engine Room
"Only The Wine" David Gray Foundling Mercer Street
"Carry" Ryan Montbleau Heavy on the Vine Blue's Mountain
"Rockin' Chair" Eric Clapton Clapton Reprise
"That Phone" Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Hollywood
"The Curse" Josh Ritter So Runs The World Away Josh Ritter