You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To is being touted as Richmond Fontaine’s farewell LP, and if so, it’s as good a swan song as a band of storytellers could want. Founded in the mid-’90s, when the alt-country movement was moving into darker territory, Richmond Fontaine could get gothic when the situation required. But the band always kept its somber tones from weighing down the music, and You Can’t Go Back is perfectly balanced in that respect. Opening instrumental “Leaving Bev’s Miners Club At Dawn” and closing piano-and-vocal number “Easy Run” are the most melancholy moments—and the latter, brief as it is, is easily one of the most affecting songs the band’s ever recorded. Between those bookends, the record moves from bad-luck moans (“I Can’t Black It Out If I Wake Up And Remember,” “Blind Horse”) to bad-luck-and-to-hell-with-it-anyway stompers (“Let’s Hit One More Place,” “Tapped Out In Tulsa”). Along that spectrum are the kinds of story-rich tunes that Richmond Fontaine has made its signature, of which the broken, gorgeous “Three Brothers Roll Into Town” is the most dramatically complex.
As the titles and the span of moods suggest, this is a record packed to the rafters. Even at 50 minutes, it’s a heady draught to take in one sitting. You Can’t Go Back unrolls like a Raymond Carver short-story collection, pulling its beat-down characters from one near miss to the next, until you begin to wonder if anyone’s going to come out a winner. But listen more closely, and you start to hear simple survival past damage as an achievement. If this album is a ride-out for Richmond Fontaine, it’s hard to imagine a better one.
—Eric Waggoner
