I had my tickets. And the understanding that the posthumous album by Richard Laviolette would be played by his band and guest vocalists. I loved the name of the album, All Wild Things Are Shy, and cover art done by artist/partner sophia bartholomew. I was excited to hear it. All I had to do was wait until October 10 at Heartwood Hall. That was my plan.. But as they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.
It was the algorithm that got me. I was grocery shopping with my headphones on and I heard a familiar voice singing about Carter and Cash. It sounded like Laviolette. I checked my phone. Sure enough, I was hearing the first song from the posthumous album; the algorithm had taken me right to my Release Radar after a Ruston Kelly album had ended.
I peeked to see if the whole album had dropped. It had. I struggled the whole drive home with whether to listen right away or wait until the concert.
Here’s where I admit I’m a weak man when it comes to good music. I abandoned my plans to wait until the release show, and played the album from beginning to end when I got home. At first listen, I loved it. And after multiple plays, I realized it was going to be another Laviolette album that will be listened to for years to come.
Knowing this was Laviolette’s final album, written in his last five years before he used MAiD to end his life, I was looking for messages, symbols, themes and references. It’s the curse of an English grad to over-analyze – I can’t help but try to understand what Laviolette wanted to leave us with. Granted he did expect to write and record more albums with Scott Merritt at the cottaGe in Guelph, but with Huntington’s symptoms coming on too strong, this was sadly his last.
First off, it’s a beautiful work of art, patient in its delivery with carefully crafted lyrics. While I enjoyed the anxious urgency of some of his earlier work when I was younger, I appreciate the measured cadence of this album now.
Thematically, his love for music is again a focus, as it was on his 2017 album. He also confronts mortality directly as he has on previous efforts. But this album offers something new, an evolution of songwriting that seems comfortable for Laviolette. His vocals are more reigned in throughout the album emphasizing certain syllables with punctuated twangs instead of whole verses or chorus as was the case on previous albums, no more so than A Little Less Like a Rock, A Little More Like Home. He’s focused here, but having fun. Listen for the ‘ha’ between lines in Saved by Rock and Roll for proof.
There is certainly a sense of fatalism on this final work, which shows up in various forms, one of the most prominent is through a submission to external forces like storms, currents, and dangerous water. He is clearly outlining a sense of powerlessness in this collection. Take Pack It Up for example. It’s slow rolling cousin of The Rock and The Moss but trades bucolic imagery for darker references and Sadie-esqu guitar riffs. “We’ll be stuck on this ship, til we float or flip” he sings and later refers to the bottom of the ocean with darkness swimming around you. “Your body is so still.”
On this final album, it is natural to read into the lyrics for messages he might be leaving us with. But it’s never clear whether he’s offering us advice or coaching himself. Is he speaking to us when he says “Don’t quit on me/ don’t lose your heart/ don’t capsize your most precious part” or is he reassuring himself on the poetic, direct and uplifting standout Don’t Quit on Me? “Don’t lose your grip on the oar” he sings shakily taking the nautical symbolism to the right height without overdoing it.
The same uncertain complexity is true on Florence and Delilah when he confronts adversity by declaring “We are going to get through.” These are emotional tunes regardless of whether the message is for us or for him. It’s the mark of good songwriting that we don’t know.
If it wasn’t clear who Laviolette has been influenced by, he casts little doubt by coming out of the gate with a Neil Young inspired burner with that trademark Laviolette angst hovering at the edges of each line. There are a few references to Neil and Crazy Horse on this album, which isn’t a surprise as Young was an early inspiration for Laviolette (source). Nice to see some of his favourites show up on this last one. On the title-track he lets Bry Webb and Cots dance poetically across a delicate guitar picking with a reference to the Magnolia Electric Co, seemingly one of Laviolette’s later influences and a reverence we both share. The ghost of Jason Molina hovers in the background on a few of these. I would have loved to chat with Laviolette about the impact of Songs: Ohia on our lives.
I also sense some Hayden influences on Welcome Back, an ode to spring, another of Laviolette’s loves. By the way he describes the budding of plants and shedding of winter layers, it’s clear there is a reverence for the month of May. I think we can all relate, but could never put it so eloquently or hauntingly as Laviolette does here.
Train of Death directly addresses his decision to end his life with MAiD. “This old train of death is always coming in on time/ It has never missed a stop/ and soon it will be mine,” he sings in fatalistic fashion. The train starts out a million miles away and by the end of the song it’s only a hundred yards. “I can feel it in my heart get closer every day” he sings and is joined by a chorus of voices making it clear he’s not alone. The train is coming for us all. The difference for Laviolette is that he knew the exact location of his stop. The rest of us are all waiting and hoping.
When he declares “Music, you were a shelter from the storms above” on Constant Love, it brings together two recurring themes in his catalogue: a love for music and a submission to greater forces: the ocean, the storms, the final hand, the darkness, the train that always comes on time. But there is no despondency in acknowledging the greater forces at play, the things we cannot change. There’s no harm in admitting you can’t win; after all, as he says on Two Guitars in 2017 “In the end as the reckoning came/ We didn’t win but we learned to play the game.” We’ll never beat death but we may get redemption along the way to that final train stop.
In closing, I’d like to return to that first song I heard unexpectedly in the grocery store this week, Carter and Cash. It’s becoming my favourite on All Wild Things Are Shy, both for its fun guitar riffs and its unmistakable Laviolette lyrical delivery: “Everyone needs a little Carter and Cash/ Everyone needs a little whiskey and hash/ Everyone needs to not feel old/Everyone needs a little rock and roll”
I’ll add to that: everyone needs a little Richard Laviolette in their life. Whether it’s the country and western inspired Taking The Long Way Home or the enigmatic first album Mary Carl, it’s time you discovered a local gem who gave us a great catalogue before the train finally stopped for him.
Find to All Wild Things Are Shy on Bandcamp or Spotify It can also be purchased on vinyl and CD, both of which contain hand written lyrics and artwork by his partner sophia barholomew.
Written by Jesse Wilkinson
Cover art by sophia bartholomew
Photos provided by You’ve Changed Records
