Portland’s chief exponents of literary rock, Richmond Fontaine have announced the release of ‘Lost in the Trees’, their new single and first from the upcoming album ‘The High Country’. Produced by John Askew (The Dodos, Karl Blau) ‘Lost in the Trees’ will be released through Trash Aesthetics/Decor Records on August 29th.Listen here
TA708 Richmond Fontaine – Lost in the Trees by Trash Aesthetics
Both ‘Lost in the Trees’ and ‘The Eagles Lodge’ are fragments from the 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 versus dark, Vlautin has woven a tale where screw-ups and freaks terrorize the lives of innocents.
The limited edition 7” features an instrumental exclusive, ‘The Mechanic Meets Girl at the Movies’ and also comes complete with artifacts from the bleakly unsettling world of ‘The High Country’ – a match book from The Chainsaw Sea (a bar owned by a speed freak), back stories of the characters written on headed paper from The Eagles Lodge where local conservative folk meet and a beer mat asking the whereabouts of the missing girl.
Richmond Fontaine will be touring acoustically this summer and have shows at the Port Eliot and Truck festivals amongst others lined up; they also have a special single launch planned for July at The Prince Charles Cinema in London. Entitled ‘An Evening of Film and Music curated by Richmond Fontaine’, the band will premiere the ‘Lost in the Trees’ video and play an acoustic set, Vlautin will then introduce the perfect cinematic counterpart to the band’s latest work: David Lynch’s Blue Velvet – home of Lumberton, surely the most infamous logging town in popular culture.
Wed 20th July – The Railway, Winchester
Thurs 21st July – Prince Charles Cinema, London *Single launch*
Fri 22nd July – Port Eliot Festival, St Germans, Cornwall
Sat 23rd July – Truck Festival, Hill Farm, Steventon, Oxon
Sun 24th July – Americana Summertyne Festival, Newcastle
Richmond Fontaine will also be playing as a full band for a unique show later this year where they will be performing the entire new album and the entire ‘Post to Wire’ album:
Tues 27th Sept – The Scala, London
In addition to his work with Richmond Fontaine, lead vocalist Willy Vlautin has written three critically lauded novels, ‘The Motel Life’, ‘Northline’ and ‘Lean on Pete’. ‘The Motel Life’ has just been turned into a major motion picture set for release in early 2012 produced and directed by the Polsky Brothers (Bad Lieutenant) and featuring Dakota Fanning, Stephen Dorff, Emile Hersch and Kris Kristofferson.
Richmond Fontaine is Dan Eccles (guitar), Dave Harding (bass, guitar, vocals), Sean Oldham (vibes, percussion, keyboards, guitar, vocals) and Willy Vlautin (vocals, guitar).
