Ouroboros

One of the most probing singer/songwriters of his generation, Ray LaMontagne achieves a cosmically sublime state on <i>Ouroboros</i>. Lined with imagery that feels drawn from riddle-like dreams, the freely flowing song cycle passes through ethereal jazz folk (“Homecoming”), fuzzily iridescent psychedelia (“While It Still Beats”) and radioactive blues (“Hey, No Pressure”). The tunes are spare, often consisting of just LaMontagne’s raspy whisper laid over standard rock instrumentation. Yet the way producer Jim James wraps them in echo-laden atmosphere and spacey effects lends the music a spellbinding sense of vastness.