In writer Willy Vlautin's monochrome world there are no happy endings – just enough light to keep hope alive. His work with Richmond Fontaine over the past 20 years has featured sympathetic portraits of the lost and the lonely, victims of an unforgiving power imbalance who struggle to find meaning in 21st-century America. This side project is located in the same dismal space but it is markedly different. Vlautin wrote the songs for singer Amy Boone, who, he told Thequietus.com, "has a great weariness to her voice that is half beat-up and half-beautiful". He and Fontaine's drummer, Sean Oldham, also enlisted Jenny Conlee (The Decemberists) and Tucker Johnson (The Minus Five). Boone is remarkable, resigned and yet resilient. Her soulful voice, weighed down by disappointment and regret, matches Vlautin's often beautiful fragments of lives lived painfully, none better than the title track. decorrecords.com
Download: Colfax Avenue, I Won't Slip Up