Red House Painters ----->>Sun Kil Moon

Any word on a new material for '05?

"Fix your fucking face."

There are individual RHP songs that match the best of Ghosts... but in terms of overall quality Kozelek has never been better. This sentiment has been echoed by my friends who are RHP fans too.

I'm not sure it can really be compared to RHP's debut. The singer and lyricist that Mark Kozelek is today seems to be a very different person to the one who wrote Down Colorful Hill, lovely as it is.

And yeah, any news on new Sun Kil Moon output?

...to wank lazy-ish neil-style for a record's-length of songs? I'd say that wouldn't be much of a creative stretch. I think he just has more sides to him and wouldn't be fulfilled creatively doing that exclusively (though it would *not* surprise me if he did). Or maybe he just wants to sell records. I agree though, this is a beautiful record -- though I admit that the jams are my least favorite. I'm still an Ocean Beach fan.

Also I feel like a lot of people who consider themselves "music snobs" or "indie darlings" don't appreciate the haunting beauty of Mark Kozelek's songs. Maybe it's because Red House Painters (alongside the magnificant Low) got me through my depressed, mopey teenage days in high school--I've always kept a thankful love for those songs that still bring a feeling of bittersweet nostalgia to my day. Anyway, I guess I was just wondering if anyone else shares the high school (or college!) appreciation for RHP.

I just realized that Sun Kil Moon are playing here tonight! Wow! Now I'm excited.

this would be Koz solo. A roll of the dice. Might be amazing, might be boring.

i'm a music snob and i appreciate it.

Stand Back For Exciter!

Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts of the Great Highway (Jetset-2003)

Ex-painter of red houses, John Denver fan, AC/DC interpreter, Almost Famous fictionally famous bass player and all-around sackus sadicus Mark Kozelek has stepped up to the plate swinging the prettiest goddamn baseball bat you ever saw at the bloated corpus of latter-day “Porpoise Song” coveters and bleaters silly enough to raise a 6-string in honor of folk-rock troubadours past. He nixes the need for any and all Neil Young grovelers, Elektra recording artists circa 1969-1973 archivists, Gordon Lightfoot apologists, oldweirdamerikalonerfolkpsych annoyances - those crate-digging dingleberrys with their deathchant whine of “no, he’s okaaaay, but have you ever heard Perry Leopold’s “Experiment in Metaphysics”?” - and fusty, fetid beardos both old and new elegantly decaying in woodland settings to the delight of their barn-dwelling goggled hoot owl acolytes aloft in the rafters dreaming of dust turned to digital gold courtesy of their Sony 3D(eye) handicams. I mean anyone can live in the woods and wear long-flowing robes. Natalie Merchant and Pat Methany live in the woods and wear long-flowing robes. Heck, I live in the woods and wear long-flowing robes!
Which is why Kozelek’s Sun Kil Moon album is so refreshing. It’s languid and dreamy, and yet weighted by complete self-assurance (Listening to music that sounds so effortless and beautiful makes you wonder why you spent so much time in beer-soaked basements watching the pots & pans brigade hurl poo-poo at their inner child. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the noiseniks and furry freaks and their ramshackle antics. More than most people even. When your brother is a Bunnybrain you learn to love a lot of things. But there comes a time when that Ant Trip Ceremony record just ain’t cutting it and you wanna hear, i dunno, Donovan or something). It’s music that sounds comfortable in its own skin. If I had to compare it to something I would compare it to M.Gira’s recent acoustic work with Angels Of Light, but I won’t because they don’t sound anything alike. What Kozelek and Gira DO share is an innate sense that after all their years of recording they are really good at this stuff! And they are. While Sun Kil Moon steals comfortably from the acoustaroots/singersongwriter/St.Neil albums that everybody steals from, their warm-blooded and expert suburban blues never feels like an empty exercise (see:Beck) or a diversion until something better comes along. What it sounds like is a really great Red House Painters album (duh). But from the opener “Glenn Tipton” - Judas Priest fans might want to scoop up this album for the only song likely to ever mention BOTH guitarists from that band - to the tradfolkish instrumental closer “Pancho Villa”, it’s softer and prettier and flows more organically than the last couple RHP albums. Less Crazy Horse after all these years - although there is some of that on the peppier numbers - and less maudlin too. (Less self-indulgent as well. Even though there are long songs on this album they feel like they have a right to be long. One of the perverse pleasures of an RHP show was scanning the crowd for the looks of horror on the faces of uninitiated friends and lovers dragged there by fans of the band as one endless lovelorn dirge crawled to an end only to be replaced by YET ANOTHER endless lovelorn dirge. And so on. Until there was a lifeless heap of bodies littering the floor.)
12 years ago Mark Kozelek was duking it out with Throwing Muses and Lisa Germano to see who could be the most miserable American act ever signed to the tears ‘n’ fears 4AD label. The lead track on RHP’s debut was all about the impossible task of becoming 24 years old. If Sun Kil Moon is essentially grown-up folk-rock music for ex-miserablists and lacks a certain unhinged recklessness that RHP had at times it’s none the worse for it. (Just as Gira’s AOL records are sometimes as powerful as that hammer he used to hit me with when I was a noise-obsessed teen.) It’s not staid and it’s not resting on anything other than its member’s abilities to play guitar, bass, and drums really well and in a way that may provoke sighs of contentment and a desire to pick up some Poco albums someday. There are worse things that music can do to you.

Silent Ghost, I agree with everything you say. This album is one of my favorites of the 00s, and "Duk Koo Kim" might be my favorite song. But why isn't your thread title Red House Painters

what I meant is you have Red House Painters is way better than Sun Kil Moon.

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when it should be

if this one doesn't show up, i give up

what i love in that vein spec. about Ghosts of Great Highway in general and versus RHP/M.K. stuff:

a. the long EPIC guitar riffs - esp. the ones where the same chords/riffs are repeated over and over again unrelenting and then a small almost unimportant change comes in -- Mark does excess excessively and only pulls out of it minimally and briefy and when he has to. -- that takes balls.
b. Carry Me Ohio - being one of the most perfect pop songs
c. how incredible his voice sounds - wow!

what i don't like:
a. after long listen - sometimes the songs really are too sappy
b. and you get tired of the repetition
c. tracks are too polished and you want his voice to not sound so good - loved when he used to sing consistently slightly flat in old RHP
d. wishing there was atleast one wild track like a Make Like Paper on this album
f. even though the lyrics are often less cliche than on RHP stuff, this one album still seems less personal.

.

only perceivable misstep on this record is 'lily and parrots' which sounds like snow patrol
most everything else: phenomenal

great, great, great album.

And unfairly neglected. It's a 2003 album that was, until very recently, out-of-print, right?

Not neglected by me. Though it was my introduction to Kozelek, so I had been neglecting him for quite some time until then... Ghosts of the Great Highway was reissued on his own label last year.

it might have been out of print but it wasn't very hard to find; it got reissued with (some unnecessary) bonus tracks probably just around the time it might have gotten scarce. I think the label went belly up

That may be right (the disc was reissued on Kozelek's own label).

heaps good

I have been designated the task of sifting through mountains of old photos & putting together a slideshow for my parents' upcoming 50th Anniversary celebration. Listening to the Red House Painters while doing so has added an enjoyable degree of melancholy to the process!

Maybe I'll cue up Ghost of the Great Highway next, for comparison, tho I believe SKM will be vastly outmatched by RHP in the music-look-at-old-photos-by dept.