Of all the Neil Young disciples trying in vain to reinvent his country grunge sound, Richmond Fontaine frontman Willy Vlautin may come the closest. Though, the exact root of this band's take on the Canadian Master may be culled from Uncle Tupelo's "Discarded" off Still Feel Gone. In that song, the thrashing guitars and pounding drums drove each other into the wall of a slow picking banjo. And if you put some real punks behind the wheel and removed all hope from that banjo, you'd get an idea of what Richmond Fontaine might be aiming for.

When we last left songwriter/ guitarist Vlautin, he was the poet laureate of life's underside; taking on in his songs the voice of whores, desperate losers and petty criminals. He slurs and mumbles alternately over a wash of electric guitars and determinably strummed acoustics like a drunken Van Morrison channeling Jay Farrar caught in a bear trap. At points, Vlautin screams with the shock and unbearable pain of the captured Farrar. Other times, he wavers with the fatigue, exhaustion and sad resolve of the Son Volt leadman still trapped a week later. Could things have gotten worse in Vlautin's world? Apparently so.

Lost Son is a dismal ordeal of an album. It will most assuredly not become anyone's party favorite-- and it can sometimes be a drag to get through-- but it's beautiful in its unifying despair. Throughout, Vlautin founds his studies in realism, building tangible lives with the simplest bricks, dragging us down to share the stories of a despicable and unsavory lot, adding flesh to stereotypes and even eliciting our empathy.

On "Savior of Time," it's a boyfriend come to pick up his girlfriend from the mental hospital after a botched suicide attempt. On "Pinkerton," it's a security guard in a dark parking lot "with a box cutter and a bashed in mind." And when Vlautin describes "A Girl in a House on Felony Flats," he deflates himself, wondering, "If it can have you, why I can't I?"

The album's most powerful cut, "Cascade," describes a teenager's journey to collect $1,400 bequest him by his estranged mother. As Vlautin feverishly works his acoustic with Paul Brainard's raining mando towards the song's conclusion, we're saddened not that we live in a world where it's possible that a boy would be robbed by his stepbrother, but rather that there exists one where it's inevitable. It's in that world where Richmond Fontaine's Lost Son is found.

-Neil Lieberman