Review Summary:
When music gives you something in life that nothing else can, it doesn’t matter what it sounds like. It doesn’t matter where these songs came from or who is responsible for them. You’ll only be disappointed in what came next or possibly before.
Somewhere there is a man playing guitar, another man who hits a cymbal at the ":23" mark, but all I can hear is the voice of Mark Kozelek singing, "So it's not loaded stadiums or ballparks anymore". Hearing is such a trivial event that I want to say "feel" instead, but, unlike my previous review of the album, I'll try to stay as far away from hyperbole as possible and get to the bottom of this beast that has since 2006 been a runner-up for my favorite album.
So many great minds in great bands have poured their soul into their album. Mogwai who threatened suicide before their debut, Ian Curtis who romanticized his death, and Kurt Cobain who ended it all too soon. None of these is Mark Kozelek, Red House Painters, and, certainly, not Down Colorful Hill. From the opening seconds of the album, there is very much a literal air that I can hear from the headphones and it gives me shivers as it reminds me of a place that I know too well. A place of dislocated lives with grounded, nostalgic memories. Mark Kozelek took his deepest insecurities and overburdening heartaches, made them disappear, and then remade them all into these 6 songs that reach as close to perfection as I've ever seen in music. There is no guilt, no sadness, nor any ill-will in Down Colorful Hill. Much like the best David Lynch film or Gustave Doré painting, Down Colorful Hill channels everything pathetic and sad in a white, working class man's world and makes it into a beautiful, romanticized work of art.
Of course, there is a fantastic band behind it all. Anthony Koutsos who knew just how many cymbal clashes and light drum fills would build up Kozelek's deep chords played with a uncanny gentleness, Jerry Vessel who knew the bass would come last but always made it feel essential to the song, and Gordon Mack who knew how to glisten the empty space of a track without adding in a hook that would take away the fragility that the rest of the band built up so well. It was not a great band that showed ingenuity, strength, and creativity. In the presence of decisive absence and spirit, these things we generally look up upon seem like weaknesses in the hands of Red House Painter's debut. No track on the album highlights the culminative effort of the group in this stage more then the title track. It sounds like a marching theme into the grave, but slowly builds into an anthem of youth. Everything seems stationary, yet there is always a movement and rhythm in the song that carries it ashore in all it's 11 minutes of glory. While the band I can continue to celebrate for respecting the source material and forcing themselves to adapt to it despite its simplicity and lack of virtuosity, I also need to celebrate Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of 4AD and producer, for doing the same. Rather then forcing the band to recapture the magic in hi-fi, Ivo wisely decided to keep the haunted air of the demos intact and only remix them on the most meager level. It's a bit of a joke to call him a producer, but to recognize the grace held within these magic moments of the denouement of childhood and adolescence took some wise decision making and a good heart.
Like my other two favorite albums, OK Computer and The Soft Bulletin, every word, note, and moment of silence hangs over in my ears and heart and trips up the next moment until it all starts rolling into an avalanche and forms a sort of sonic and emotional caterwaul within. I feel stuck in the early 90s, as I roam around lost in the tall grass behind my grade school, snuggled in the attic recording plays on tape, or listening to "Don't Fear the Reaper" on a cassette--not knowing the lyrics, the critical perspective, or even the artist but being enraptured by it, all the same. In the dwindling moments of "Lord Kill the Pain", I remember to fear death while still laughing at it. By the end of "Micheal", I remember how much relationships and history mean to me. Every song here reminds me of so many different things, but above all its of the places, people, and history that lies beyond in the realms of the fantastical and unreal. It's not a magical plain of hobbits, but the presence of love, innocence, and all the dark things hovering not too far above in childhood.
I know I've ended up with a "review" just as confessional and un-enlightening as the last, but I can't help but reflect the honesty of the album when discussing it. There is a wonder in being so small and lost in a big world. To not remember the way back home, to not know how people grow up to become so big and think so much, and to not know when all of it will end. I like to consider Down Colorful Hill the parental womb I came from and the parent I love most. It understands the difference between sadness and romance, the difference between remembering and imagining, and the difference between hoping and dreaming. And like one's favorite record should, I feel it understands me on a level deeper then anything else.
I remember lying in bed when I was a kid, not sleeping until 5am as I was kept awake with all the creaking sounds of the house and my door opening and closing whenever the ventilation came on. I would stay up all night and wonder if there was someone else there. If a house could be alive and be thinking about things too. I was scared ***less by the dark corners of the room but enchanted by the endless possibilities that could be contained somewhere beyond. Even though I've grown old enough to know there is nothing in the corners and, certainly, nothing beyond, I sometimes feel like I'm back in that bed when playing Down Colorful Hill and I don't ever want to leave it.
