In his new album, Ray LaMontagne digs deeper into old themes

Long Way Home

Ray LaMontagne (Liula Records, 2024)

Twenty years after the release of his first studio album (2004’s Trouble), Ray LaMontagne is comfortable in his milieu, which is soulful, twangy folk melodies delivered in a crooning tenor voice that’s been compared to Otis Redding. But his new album, Long Way Home, shows the singer-songwriter has more to say—and more depth with which to say it.

First, though, there’s an inspiring slap on the back, delivered in the album’s kickoff single, “Step Into Your Power,” a breezy foot-stomper to listen to the next time you need some hubris. With backing harmonies by The Secret Sisters, a singing duo from Alabama, the song offers rousing affirmations: “All you need / You already own / It was given to you / On the day that you were born.”

The Sisters also lend support to the two tracks that follow it—twangy “I Wouldn’t Change a Thing” and wistful “Yearning.” The latter is told from the perspective of someone watching the world “just spinnin’ around,” while grasping on to his lover for support. Now middle-aged, LaMontagne conjures the spirit of Texas legend Townes Van Zandt, who died at age 52, just a year older than LaMontagne is now. The Van Zandt lyric, “Where you been is good and gone / All you keep is the getting” from the 1972 song “To Live Is to Fly” haunts LaMontagne’s new album. In “And They Called Her California,” with LaMontagne’s blues harmonica chiming in with authority, he wants to get something back that eludes his grasp: “California you run so far away / I’ve been searching your eyes / It’s so hard to breathe in your eternity.”

In the album’s last track, a gorgeous ache called “Long Way Home,” LaMontage expresses a soft, elegant acceptance of an ending—an eloquence that sounds like poetry. Emotional intelligence is what Ray LaMontage does best, and this album is possibly his purest expression of it.