Ray LaMontagne is in the process of becoming a myth. He is a natural-born songwriter who seems to have fallen out of the skies above New England armed with a sackful of classic songs. His album, Trouble, sounds like a long-lost masterpiece thanks to the gripping power of his songwriting and the insights that producer Ethan Johns has brought to shaping and focusing the arrangements.
LaMontagne can carry it off on stage, too, without a band or overdubs (though sometimes with the aid of a stand-up bass player). A lanky, bearded figure, LaMontagne seems lost for words when he isn't singing: he murmurs barely audible thank-yous to the crowd or mutters "hmmm" to himself as he tunes his guitar.
Then he's off, and an amazing transformation occurs as he gets swept away by the music, standing tall at the microphone and roaring out the lyrics as though they were leaping up in front of him in letters of fire. You feel he is clinging on to these songs for dear life, and there is a powerful strain of redemptive soulfulness running through them. Trouble is a rousing hymn to the healing powers of love ("I've been saaaaaaaved! By a woman"), while the gospel-like Hannah is an affecting drunkard's prayer ("I'll lay down this bottle of wine if you'll just be kind to me").
The story goes that LaMontagne was a recluse living in a log cabin in Maine when he underwent a sudden conversion to music. Judging by his songs, the people who won him over were the likes of Otis Redding, Van Morrison and the Band. Often, his husky voice soars upwards into a rousing soulman's wail, while the Morrison of Moondance or Tupelo Honey is never far away in songs such as Shelter or the spellbinding ballad Jolene (not the Dolly Parton one, obviously, but Ray's is likely to prove just as durable).
On the other hand, Narrow Escape has something of the saddle-sore storytelling of a Willie Nelson or a Merle Haggard, so maybe LaMontagne has an album of gunfighter ballads in him too. It hardly ever happens that songwriters arrive so vividly or so suddenly, filling your head with songs that won't be denied. How far can he go?
· At the Cottier Theatre, Glasgow, tonight. Box office: 0141-357 3868.
