Ray LaMontagne

Ray LaMontagne’s debut album, Trouble, sold nearly 300,000 copies and garnered worthy accolades from critics and unabashed admiration from listeners. Till the Sun Turns Black will cement the breathy, soulful and hirsute singer-songwriter’s reputation for combining plain-dealing expression with exquisite tunesmithing. The tunes in this collection are far more stylistically varied than on the previous disc, and the instrumentation in particular is more diverse. While Trouble felt outwardly confessional, many of the arrangements on Till the Sun Turns Black, especially the gospel-jazz lament “Gone Away From Me,” feel more like an intimate, if very catchy, bedside prayer. While consciously avoiding repetition, LaMontagne’s songwriting intuition proves just as strong the second time around.