Ray Lamontagne, “Long Way Home.”

Ray LaMontagne likes to repeat himself. Maybe he always had. And maybe we just need him to because with each progressive lyrical repetition the message becomes clearer: He’s making an album that’s trying to penetrate the soul.

The Grammy winning singer-songwriter’s voice is as soulful as it ever was. There’s a hoarseness to it. A rasp like a weathered twine holding the shed doors together; like a homemade swing hanging from an oak tree in the back yard. Listening to him now makes it hard to believe that it was decades ago – decades? – when we were introduced to songs like “You Are the Best Thing,” “Let It Be Me” and “Roses and Cigarettes.” Songs that perhaps, still seem to shape our opinions of Ray LaMontagne despite the eight studio albums that he’s made since 2004, most recently 2020’s Monovision.

The album artwork is a theme-setting image for Long Way Home. It’s of a person tuning a stringed instrument and is derived from a woodblock print by artist Barbara S. Beck that hangs above LaMontagne’s work desk. How will a woodblock print, an upcoming tour and a new album shape the almost reclusive singer’s legacy?

The first track, single “Step Into Your Power,” begins with a soulful, Motown-ish shuffle. The guitar hook attaches itself to LaMontagne’s voice while the overall tone has the feel of a parent-child conversation. (He made the video with help from his son, Tobias).

“I Wouldn’t Change a Thing,” another single, seems to change direction of conversation to one between two older folks, sitting at a bar stool exchanging stories. The façade of the advice-giving adult talking to a child has now been stripped to a place of pure honesty. The wavy licks, upbeat tempo and repetition of “Do it all over again/Do it all over again/ Do it all over again” is exactly what you might expect and want to hear from LaMontagne’s voice.

There are several tracks on Long Way Home that seem to pay homage to early ’70s folk albums. For example, “Yearning” recalls Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline or Blood on the Tracks feeling while “And They Called Her California” seems to be a spiritual response to Joni Mitchell’s 1971 hit, “California.” “The Way Things Are,” perhaps a reflection on success, fortune and fame, also seems to echo Mitchell’s syncopated vocals and nostalgia-driven songwriting.

A pair of late instrumental tracks, “La De Dum, La De Da” and “So Damned, Blue,” start to calm the album down to what, in effect, is the coda of Long Way Home: that is, the title track.

“Long Way Home” creates the image of someone walking into a bar that has no amplifier and finding a lone guitarist in the corner playing to no one in particular. “Just as every childhood has an end,” he sings, and it feels like you’re eavesdropping on someone else’s confession. That, perhaps, is exactly why the album feels nostalgic.

The song’s video, a moody art collage produced by Bella LaMontagne (LaMontagne’s daughter-in-law) walks us through idyllic forest scenes. The journey ends with us following a waterfall upstream to a cave to where a musician is tuning their instrument. The musician, the same from the album artwork, is a hermit or troubadour making peace with their life, with their instrument, playing it only for him- or herself.

Lucky us that we can listen in, too.

Follow Jesse Herwitz at Twitter.com/JesseHerwitz and Instagram.com/JesseHerwitz.