Mark Kozelek - Little Drummer Boy - Live

Crap I forgot:
Personal Highlights
* Sequencing is pretty good.
* "Lily and Parrots" (currently enthralling) version dead-air-sparse-solo is great even with the awesome cut-off-unexpectedly ending, considering the Sun Kil Moon version is such a bad-ass rocker, one of the few I think he's ever recorded (I noticed more when he's by himself that he'll just cut-off abruptly to end a song after what seems like he's had enough, like he suddenly becomes tired with the song, or it's just too exhausting to go on any more. It's great.)
* "Cruiser" - The SadReminders.com board is really gaga over the so-called "Ramon-Era" material and it's surely a welcome burst of color to an otherwise Tiny Cities / RHP greatest hits grey most people would expect. This song translates the best to the dueling live guitars.
* "Rock N' Roll Singer" = Can't beat his AC/DC. The reverb is big on this one, tough only on his vocals really, which brings me to...
* This album sounds like I remember hearing it live. Maybe it's just me but even listening to FTP live shows of his and other bands it never sounds as I remember hearing it at the time. I might be wrong.

I don't want a live album from him at this point. First the Modest Mouse covers, then a seriously lackluster live show I saw, now this. He's just coasting, man.

Kozelek strikes me as almost having made a career out of coasting. The strange thing was, I was a big fan of his two solo EP/LPs--they brought more pith and impact to his style than 95% of the Red House Painters work ever had (barring the occasional "Summer Dress"). But then Sun Kil Moon brought back the "coasty," lazy-big guitar and melodies of the Red House Painters days; and even the more spartan Modest Mouse cover album lacked the vigour of the AC/DC covers. Considering he's already released one mediocre live album with a titular Christmas song, a 2-CD second batch seems unfortunate. He's a man with talent, but in general I think he lacks structure in his work--too often it's a sepiatone haze of gauzy, noodling chord progressions and three-note melodies with teenage melancholic lyrics.

Hahahah, right, like I said...hahha

i'm game for this altho i hate that stop song abruptly thing he does in concert. and yeah his performances can be sorta lackluster, but i think perhaps what's going on around him that makes it so/might feel differently if i could get closer to the sound w/o distraction and also it weren't some one-off experience. haha seeing him last time i got the feeling i wasn't supposed to enjoy it! dude. speaking of, don't know if he's coasting artistically or that's just where he is mentally.

This actually made it into my top five albums of last year. I think it's great. This is what I wrote.

"Little Drummer Boy was released right at the end of this year. I usually allow a couple of months grace for an album to click, but it’s quickly become clear that this double album is the definitive document of Kozelek live. The recording quality is excellent (crowd noise is unobtrusive), and its bias toward more recent material makes it a more coherent album than the grab bag on disk two of the Red House Painters Retrospective."

Ridiculously pompous writing aside, I stand by that.

The songs are all pretty same-y, but that's to be expected and it's all worth it for "Bubble."