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	RAY LaMONTAGNE Maine attraction

Emerging with a cigarette dangling from his lips and puffs of smoke billowing around his mountain-man beard, Maine native Ray LaMontagne approached the front of the Berklee Performance Center stage with quiet grace a week ago Friday. The svelte, reserved singer, who barely uttered five words above a whisper all evening, wore jeans and those tan work boots favored by New England laborers. But though he resembles the adventurous lost-spirit protagonist of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, that impression changed the minute he started playing "Oh Mama." What he lacked in small-talk skills he more than made up for by speaking the language of his own heart in song. He continued to move through selections from Trouble, his 2004 RCA debut, peppering "Narrow Escape" with harmonica embellishments and offering emotive renditions of "Jolene," "Shelter," and "Hold You in My Arms" that showcased his rafter-shaking vocal cords. Equally affecting was the softer, breathier tone he switched to as the night progressed.

Petite, 23-year-old Washington State native Brandi Carlile, whose raspy voice and intensity during her opening set elicited comparisons with a young Stevie Nicks or Ani DiFranco, joined LaMontagne for "Hannah," and his lion of a voice left little room for hers. But the sweet singer had won the crowd over earlier with material from her homonymous Red Ink debut and little revelations. (She said she liked Patsy Cline because Patsy "wasn’t afraid not to sound pretty in order to get her point across.") She held her own before leaving LaMontagne alone to deliver a handful of new tunes, including an ode to some of his late heroes (Johnny Cash, the Band’s Richard Manuel). When LaMontagne eventually addressed the audience, he pointed out that the venue was "long and skinny, like me," before adding, "Nerves keep me thin . . . nerves and the coke."