Review Summary: A sure rollercoaster of an album.
“A chance for calm,
A hope for freedom,
Outlet from my cold solitary kingdom,
By the forest of our spring stay,
Where you walked away
And left a bleeding part of me.
Empty and bothered,
Watching the water,
Quiet in the corner,
Numb and falling through
Without you what does my life amount to?”
There is a number of adjectives that I can use to describe the Red House Painters’ music:
Emotional, auto-biographical, sweeping, weeping, sad, depressing, gloomy, indie
These descriptive words will have already given you an idea of what they sound like. Red House Painters is the brainchild of Mark Kozelek who has lived a life in sadness and despair. His songs serve as an emotional outlet describing events that have happened within his lifetime. This is the band’s debut where Kozelek’s songwriting is just starting to flourish and the end results are dismal.
Kozelek’s songwriting is the main summit here. He is able to execute his lyrics into the most saddening tones. Without this, the music simply wouldn’t work. The guitars don’t do anything that hasn’t been done before, the bass just sits there while the drums do the simplest of things. But do you know what, it doesn’t matter in the slightest. The music is the ideal backing for Mark’s tales of sorrow. Red House Painters 1 starts in superb style, “Grace Cathedral Park” conflicts with the rest of the songs here but it’s still simply excellent. The sweeping folksy guitar is poignant and makes this a beautiful beginning to an otherwise gloomy album. As said earlier, the songwriting here is based around stories in Mark’s life and an example of this would be “Katy Song”, a song about a man who feels he has nothing when his lover leaves him to live in London. It is touching material and the way Kozelek expresses this is absolutely fantastic.
The way the whole album is presented is enjoyable albeit a bit demanding for some listeners. Throughout the 75 minutes this LP is played is a very challenging listen to first time listeners. Some songs end up as a letdown and detract from the overall outlook of the record. The weird thing about this is that the instant high from the excellent tracks fly right down while listening to the flops and this is where the album suffers. There is still a lot to get out of this if you take it piece by piece but this is just another case of difficult listening.
However, ignoring that last paragraph there’s not that much wrong with this. The lush sound from the tracks make you come back again and again and the sensation from the songwriting secures a revisit. It may not live up to
Ghosts of the Great Highway by the Red House Painters' renewal group Sun Kil Moon but holds up well in Mark's discography. There’s not much more to say about this album except it’s a great listen for the casual listener and also a great album in general.
