Red House Painters and Mark Kozelek

Mark Kozelek was one of the greatest poets of the rock music in the '90s. His style, initially influenced by the school of folk-rock from San Francisco that had been led by Catheads and had culminated with the introverted style of American Music Club, was linked in reality to the more resigned and anti-spectacular songwriters of the 60s: Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley, and Nick Drake (although Kozelek always supported the claim that he did not know Nick Drake, and was instead inspired by John Denver and Cat Stevens). As those of his teachers, his stories are as resigned as they are universal, as humble as they are metaphysical. In fact, the soft melancholy of this humble, suburban coffee-shop storyteller hides an epic stateliness.

In the late '80s, Kozelek (vocals, born in 1968 in Ohio, and later moving to Atlanta) formed the Red House Painters, an acoustic quartet, with Mack Gordon (guitar) in San Francisco.

Down Colorful Hill (4AD, 1992) brings together six long compositions created two and three years before, songs which are soft whimpers and prolonged sighs. The music is reduced to an absolute minimum and sung in the voice of a sleepwalker. The creations are mantras, confessional texts that slowly sink into an abysmal depression. The ten-minute Medicine Bottle does not grant revenge against fate, but rather, little by little, takes the meaning and vitality out of life. The guitar curls an endless series of softly melodic agreements, as if it is almost afraid to stop the agony of the rhythm and the song. This track, more than any, harks to the dark lamentations of Morrissey. Songs such as 24 are about as happy as the prayers of a dying man, yet are still fantastic.
The title track rises to almost martial rhythm, seemingly in hope of redeeming all of the pain which is infused into the other songs. The maximum excitation is found on Lord Kill the Pain, which is the only track that is filled with music to any extent, mixing in a little folk rock and a bit of Lou Reed.

Red House Painters (4AD, 1993), also known as Rollercoaster, is centered on four new long poems in the vein of the previous record. The first of these four appearing on the album (the third track) is the classic Katy Song, as light and elegant as a feather falling from a tower. Its melody unfolds and spirals slowly and beautifully, crowned by Gorden Mack's solo. While Strawberry Hill is distorted and shouted in a rare example of emotionalism, Mother limps catatonically for thirteen minutes, and Funhouse seems to hang in a dreamy trance, like reflections on water. These four huge tracks are slow and trembling lullabies that lull the listener into their web of agreements and words. They are handwritten remembrances of feelings, like magic moments stolen at a specific time. Each note is in celebration and remembrance of the futility of life.
Orbiting around these four cornerstone compositions are more concise and lively (relatively speaking) tracks, such as Mistress, almost epic comparison to the stasis of the others, or New Jersey , almost a gospel a cappella. Impressionist watercolors like Grace Cathedral Park, another summit of the band’s art, contain ineffable surface details, marred by the whirlwind of life, and show a singer and writer always on the verge of suicide.

The material excluded from the previous disk (such as Evil) appears on the next disc, also called Red House Painters (4AD, 1993).

Not since Chris Isaak had someone written songs of loneliness and failure like this, and not since Nick Drake had anyone created such touching music with such little accompaniment.

Opened by a short instrumental piece with rustic flavor, Cabezon, Ocean Beach (1995) acts as a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. Although the depression is still acute in pieces like Shadows (accompanied only by an almost new age piano) and Brockwell Park, which seems to roam a cemetery in the fashion of Nick Drake, one can find hope in places like the disengaged and swinging country of Over My Head and San Geronimo, which are unusually lively pop and even Celtic pieces, belonging to a genus undoubtedly more optimistic. The slow and acoustic chamber folk melody with emotion that distinguished the band emerges only in the brief picture of Summer Dress.
The longest composition, Drop, is pointless to debate; it gives more emphasis to the hypnotic and transcendental style, in which there is no joy or sadness. Kozelek did not understand a lot about life, but he finally figured out how to look at it with a detached eye.

Songs For A Blue Guitar (Supreme, 1996 - Plain Recordings, 2009) is an album recorded almost live. It gives up the maniacal precision of the previous recordings. Mark Kozelek let go, also showing that the sound on this record is more masculine, although always anchored in his voice and always reluctant to give way to percussion.
The effect of the increased spontaneity is curious: the disc is rooted in the history of folk music. Have You Forgotten goes back to the more traditional singer-songwriter, and the resigned tone, melodious but majestic, converts the band into the mold of gentle rock singers such as Donovan (similar is Priest Alley Song, containing just a trickle mellotron). The languid and martial gospel of Song for a Blue Guitar echoes Knocking on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan. Make like Paper echoes Harvest by Neil Young (and it is a real tribute to the art of the Canadian singer-songwriter’s guitar, complete with the martial cadence and a neurotic guitar solo, for a total of twelve minutes). I Feel The Rain Fall is an unusual experiment: it is lively and jumping, as with New Orleans blues, and contains a lullaby melody and folk rock strumming. Kozelek's music acts more and more as a bridge between the Western folk and Eastern spiritualism. The transcendent quality of his music is enhanced by the hypnotic strumming and the chanting of Tibetan Trailways, as well as the guitar impressionism of Revelation Big Sur, which is only a few steps from the new age music.

Songs for a Blue Guitar is the most ambitious disc of Kozelek. Red House Painters is the most poetic, and Ocean Beach is the most musical. Down Colorful Hill, albeit brief and naive, remains the most original work.

Retrospective (4AD) contains one disc of already published material and another of unreleased material. The second disc serves only to raise the price of the anthology.

While Red House Painters' Old Ramon still was stuck in a limbo due to litigations with the previous label, Rock'N'Roll Singer (Badman, 2000), the solo mini-album by Mark Kozelek (four covers), tried in vain to repeat the charm of the early albums. Find Me Ruben Olivares and Ruth Marie get close.

The next Kozelek EP was a reading of ten AC/DC songs, What's Next To The Moon (Badman, 2001).

The single Duk Koo Kim (Vinyl, 2003) was a ten-minute psychedelic ode in the vein of Tim Buckley.

Red House Painters' long-delayed Old Ramon (Subpop, 2001), originally recorded in the spring of 1998, finds the band in top form and Kozelek in an existentially adult mood. The absorbed compositions of the album surround their insinuating melodies with a magical, fantastic atmosphere, that lends the music an almost spiritual quality. The Indian-tinged lullaby Wop-A-Din-Din (with a female chorus straight from the Pacific islands) recalls Kevin Ayers' imaginary-exotic vignettes, while the ecstatic vocal tone and dilated guitar licks of Void (stretched over nine minutes) resemble the psychedelic psalms of David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name. Another nine-minute confession, Cruiser, proceeds at a slow, country pace while the guitars jingle a free-form shuffle, the whole sounding like a cross between Neil Young and Tim Buckley. Eleven minutes of River present the same pattern in a more electric format, crackling guitars lulling the singer's elongated wail at a skewed waltz tempo, thereby bridging the gap between confessional auteurs and Nirvana's lyrical grunge. But, no matter how many references to the classics creep into the cartilage and corrupt the skeleton, the flesh is uniquely Kozelek, romantic and dreamy in an almost frightening manner, stinking of metaphysical and personal insecurity, rotting inside while it looks healthy outside.
Kozelek was deeply shaken by John Denver's death, and at least two of the simpler, catchier songs remind us of the sweet country folksinger: Michigan and Golden. The contrast with the lenghtier, tortured pieces couldn't be starker.
The band rocks in the bass-heavy Byrd Joel, while Kozelek weaves his hypnotic mantra, in the distorted, syncopated, Rolling Stones-inspired boogie of Between Days. Just to prove that they know how to.
Overall, the mood is far less depressed than on the earlier albums, the landscape has added colors to the black and white silhouettes of their beginnings. If some of the "poetry" has been lost, and the message is not as deep as it used to be, the musical skills are just beginning to bloom. The Red House Painters have become more musicians than painters.

Mark Kozelek's new project, Sun Kil Moon (featuring Red House Painters' Anthony Koutsos, American Music Club 's Tim Mooney, Geoff Stanfield), debuted with Ghosts Of The Great Highway (Jetset, 2003), a work that closely resembles Red House Painters' best moments and carefully shuns the cliches of its age. The 14-minute cryptic Duk Koo Kim is the tour de force that best interprets Kozelek's new existential mood. It opens as an hypnotic litany at martial pace. Then its sound gets thicker and somewhat loose, turning solely instrumental, with a string instrument tempering the dramatic edge, and then the acoustic guitar and other instruments penning a delicate tapestry of tones. Meanwhile, the delicate Carry Me Ohio, Last Tide, Floating, Gentle Moon, and the acoustic R.E.M.-ish ballad Glen Tipton, are typical Kozelek fare. Even the oddities, the upbeat Lily And Parrots and the solemn and vibrant Salvador Sanchez, display the same kind of subdued desperation. Overall, Kozelek returns to his most artistically successful spectrum of sounds, and does so with enough self-awareness but no excess baggage to keep the proceedings from sounding merely nostalgic.

Sun Kil Moon's Tiny Cities (2005) was a collection of Modest Mouse covers.

Little Drummer Boy (2007) documented live Kozelek performances.

Kozelek resurrected the moniker Sun Kil Moon (now de facto a solo project) for April (Caldo Verde, 2008), a diligent excursion in the various subgenres of folk-rock, with a peak of pathos in the ten-minute Neil Young-esque distorted-guitar dirges Tonight The Sky (over a Harvest-like pace but with a soaring refrain) and The Light (slower and noisier), and a peak of soulful introversion in the ten-minute opener Lost Verses. His pastoral acoustic alter-ego surfaces in the Donovan-ian Lucky Man. The angelic, whispered Unlit Hallway, the desolate Blue Orchids, and the bleak, obsessive atmosphere Heron Blue show his dexterity to use the simplest of means to achieve the maximum of emotional impact. By comparison, Moorestown feels like an orchestral ballad. Even the thin layer of strings that covers the nine-minute Tonight in Bilbao feels like too much. The players include drummer Anthony Koutsos, bassist Geoff Stanfield, violist Michi Aceret.

Sun Kil Moon's solo acoustic Admiral Fell Promises (Caldo Verde, 2010) opens with Alesund, a display of tender fingerpicking (that owes more to flamenco than to country music). That sets the standard for much of the album, shifting the attention from the voice to the guitar. The second song, however, does exactly the opposite: Half Moon Bay relies on an almost stoned vocal languor that recalls a saner David Crosby. Hence the two modes alternate for the rest of the album. Sam Wong Hotel is reminiscent of both renaissance and Christmas songs, the tinkling guitar tapestry sounding at times like Simon & Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair; while the seven-minute Third And Seneca has the tone of a hypnotic mantra repeated on a dull guitar pattern. The slightly more propulsive The Leaning Tree (eight minutes), however, displays the problem with this method: it comes through as just one monotonous litany because too little happens in between and below and next to the words The moving lament of Church Of The Pines is weakened by unimaginative guitar strumming. The impressionistic strumming of Bay Of Skulls is, on the other hand, weakened by bland singing. Most of the songs are probably too long for what they have to say. Kozelek is neither a great guitarist nor a great vocalist and, while he certainly enjoys what he is doing, playing by himself for an entire album feels like a bit of a stretch.

Sun Kil Moon's Among the Leaves (2012), performed again mostly on a nylon string guitar, sounded like an unnecessary corollary, and a lengthy and verbose one at that. The "electric" "King Fish" comes as a relief when it breaks the melancholic monotony of the proceedings.

Far from fading into obscurity like many songwriters of this generation, Kozelek suddenly became prolific. Like Rats (2013) is a collection of covers. The electronic Perils of the Sea (2013) was a collaboration with Album Leaf's multi-instrumentalist Jimmy LaValle (and one of the best of this minor phase); and Mark Kozelek & Desertshore (2013) was a collaboration with the band formed by Phil Carney, his former fellow in the Red House Painters, and by keyboardist Chris Connolly, a band that released Drifting Your Majesty (2010) and Drawing Of Threes (2011).

Sun Kil Moon's double-disc Benji (Caldo Verde, 2014) consists of eleven new songs, mostly unaccompanied, and of live versions of five of them. This cycle of songs probably constitutes the bleakest autobiography ever sung by a musician. They are all very personal, and realistically detailed. They are delivered in a tone that is gentle and relaxed to the point of sounding surreal in an era of hyper-fast and hyper-connected lives. There is very little movement and little pathos in the seven minutes of Carissa, a requiem of sorts to a cousin. That matter of factual approach prevails. The plaintive I Can't Live Without My Mother's Love, a duet with alt-country pioneer Will Oldham, is the exception, not the rule. In fact, his tone gets even starker, Leonard Cohen-ian stark, in Truck Driver, probably the album's standout, and in the ten-minute I Watched The Film The Song Remains The Same (alas, also the most tedious song on the album). The sleepy rhythm picks up a bit in the chanted sexual pedigree of Dogs, in the insistent blues of Pray For Newtown, in the honky-tonking I Love My Dad, in the very unusual pop-jazz ballad Ben's My Friend (with saxophone too), and especially in the bizarre serial-killer madrigal Richard Ramirez Died Today Of Natural Causes, which, musically, feels like a grisly variant of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row for the age of mass shootings. Mark Kozelek is increasingly an old-fashioned bard in the tradition of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie (with neither the wit of the former nor the populism of the latter). His monochromatic style, that couples the plainest of voices with the plainest of fingerpicking techniques, not only crafts a very personal world but is also perfect for that specific personal world, which seems a bit anachronistic, even unreal. Mark Kozelek shares a problem with many other US-based singer-songwriters: that they feel so out of touch with their age (both in terms of musical style and of lyrical content). These songs feel terribly provincial, almost as if he lived insulated from the Arab Spring, Islamic terrorism, China's economic boom and Silicon Valley. These are songs that don't resonate with anybody on the planet, except the few who know Kozelek particularly well. This is the album of an aging man with little or no interest and little or no contact with the world, who basically fantasizes about another world that doesn't exist anymore, but that paradoxically constitutes his lived life. One wonders whether Kozelek knows what a smartphone is, where Beijing is or who Putin is. They may surface in his songs when a metal-recycling neighbor picks up an iPhone from a garbage can or when a girlfriend uses a newspaper to wrap up a birthday gift.

The sprawling Benji turned out to be the beginning of Kozelek's descent into madness with a string of increasingly unlistenable albums. In the next few years SunKilMoon released three albums and Kozelek released a solo album (not counting a cover album and a Christmas album) and at least five collaborations. The first sign of madness was the spoken-word poetry album Dreams of Childhood (2015): 12 Spanish-language poems recited by him in their English translation and then by Nicolas Pauls in the original version. Most of these releases were monoliths full of lengthy self-indulgent rambling monologues with minimal arrangements, not quite streams of consciousness but first-person, autobiographical narratives that sounded increasingly out of control, a process that, in retrospective, one could see starting with Among the Leaves. If you don't care for the lyrics, these songs feel like endless torture. If you care for the lyrics, then probably it doesn't matter much how he sings them and how the players play.

The songs of Universal Themes (Caldo Verde, 2015) are, first and foremost, very long. Kozelek obviously doesn't like to tell a story in three minutes: he takes his time, feels that it's important to mention all the details like in a hyper-realist painting, and it's ok (maybe important) to take random philosophical detours. The Possum (8:59) shifts gear repeatedly, at one point becoming a rap song, and the narrative is erratic at best, forgetting the possum until almost the end. The most melodic refrain surfaces halfway into This Is My First Day And I'm Indian And I Work At A Gas Station (10:10), where he sounds like an intoxicated Kenny Rogers, but is soon swept away by a completely different singalong that in turns decays into a dreamy litany accompanied with an angelic xylophone, but then he just stops pretending to play and the coda is simply spoke word. The raw and desperate Neil Young-ian garage rave-up of With A Sort Of Grace I Walked To The Bathroom To Cry (9:47) is interrupted by sections of anemic languor. The simplest songs are also the most stable: Birds Of Flims (9:05), barely accompanied with his guitar and (multi-tracked) backup vocals and (well into the song) by strings; and Garden Of Lavender, whose main attraction is the interplay of his multi-tracked vocals in the first part.

Two collaborations with Justin Broadrick yielded Jesu / Sun Kil Moon (Caldo Verde, 2016), ostensibly a collection of love songs, and 30 Seconds To The Decline Of Planet Earth (Caldo Verde, 2017). Somehow Broadrick's tortured riffs and plodding drumbeats take a toll on the singer. On the former album, one has to go through the tedious Good Morning My Love (7:04) and Carondelet (8:35) before something that can be called a "song" appears (A Song Of Shadows, lulled in waves of shoegazing guitar and a dreamy pattern of organ). His verbose persistence sometimes generates a natural morphing of the song, possibly unplanned and unwanted, like when the bland Last Night I Rocked The Room Like Elvis And Had Them Laughing Like Richard Pryor (8:03) acquires a Bob Dylan-ian emphasis. It is, incidentally, one of the two songs where he recites a letter sent to him by a fan (the other one is America's Most Wanted Mark Kozelek And John Dillinger, a great title without a song). Too much, however, is repetitive and monotonous. For example, it is hard to tell what happens amid the strings, looped piano notes and programmed beats of Exodus (9:44) and Beautiful You (14:01) doesn't even pretend to be music: it is mostly spoken word. The second collaboration revealed in Broadrick a cunning and sophisticated producer and arranger. The stylistic palette is quite large, from the minimal techno of Wheat Bread (17:01) the bubbling synthpop carillon of The Greatest Conversation Ever In The History Of The Universe (9:44), the laid-back J.J. Cale-style blues-rock of Bombs (12:57), the shrill and tense folktronica of Hello Chicago (8:08), with a Leonard Cohen-esque coda, etc. Overall, a much more musical experience than the first collaboration.

Kozelek then released a solo album of covers, Sings Favorites (2016), followed by a collaboration with with Parquet Courts' bassist Sean Yeaton, Yellow Kitchen (2017), here mostly on keyboards, devoted to his theatrical recitations, such as the 12-minute Daffodils (in which even impersonates a dog), followed by Mark Kozelek With Ben Boye and Jim White (2017), a collaboration with keyboardist Ben Boye and the Dirty Three's drummer Jim White. Unforunately the collaborators add very little to his endless monologues, and the only decent results are the nocturnal lounge atmosphere of the jazzy piano-based Topo Gigio (14:42) and the moribund rhythm of The Robin Williams Tunnel (16:22). It was his second double album of the year and fourth album overall.

Somehow the collaborations with Jesu had the effect of expanding the musical vocabulary of Sun Kil Moon. Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood (Caldo Verde, 2017) contains more than two hours of improvised material, arranged in a variety of styles. Unfortunately it is mostly insignificant music to wildly self-indulgent lyrics. The most musical moment is perhaps Seventies TV Show Theme Song (7:30), thanks to a horn section, a guitar solo and a funky rhythm. But the arrangement is always fragile and subdued, unfocused, like in God Bless Ohio (10:37) and Stranger Than Paradise (12:24), not matching the ambition of the storytelling. and sometimes the style is more meandering than the lyrics, as in Lone Star (9:14). The lyrics are a matter for psychologists: a diary of ordinary incidents, of global concerns, of funny hobbies, of political opinions, of jokes, of self-reflection, and so on... the chronicle of a banal pointless existence, but with no introspection, without trying to make sense of it. His musical ego (which may or may not represent his real self) seems to be drifting through life with the only purpose of narrating what happens with surgical, documentarian precision... The meaning of life is simply documenting it, turning real life into stories, as if to glorify the fact that everything, in the end, is superfluous, that mundanity is our destiny.

This Is My Dinner (Caldo Verde, 2018), recorded while touring Europe in November 2017, is surprisingly musical, given that the lengthy meditations employ fairly static accompaniments. The slow-motion lounge jazz of This Is Not Possible (9:12) and This Is My Dinner (12:36) manage to lull the listener into a kind of dull trance. A fluttering piano and tired drumming propel Candles (13:40). His madcap performance in Linda Blair (11:50) is punctured by a petulant guitar and ends with three minutes of Led Zeppelin-ian blues-rock. The first half of standout Copenhagen (10:05) is drenched in a tense noir atmosphere before it morphs into a waltzing elegy that then decays into another slow-jazz dirge. Soap For Joyful Hands (13:11) is perhaps too slow and tepid, despite the more poignant piano-driven last minutes.

Mark Kozelek's solo album Mark Kozelek (2018) is truly mostly solo guitar and voice. The bland The Mark Kozelek Museum (10:26) is woken up by a melodic refrain and a lengthy guitar solo. He tries slow-motion jazz without a band in the bass-led Weed Whacker (8:03). The Banjo Song (12:42) uses the guitar strumming in a way that evokes the ticking of a wall clock. The one lively song is My Love for You Is Undying (13:08) whose rhythm and fingerpicking recall Celtic dances. But the "songs" are way too long for what they have to offer. The lack of a backing band dooms them.

Sun Kil Moon's I Also Want To Die In New Orleans (Caldo Verde, 2019), recorded with Dirty Three's drummer Jim White and saxophonist Donny McCaslin, has no singer: Kozelek's role is more rhythmic spoken-word than singing. That further lowers the musical quality of "songs" such as Coyote (12:31): they are speeches, not music. If the arrangement borders on free jazz, one could call his singing "free rambling". However, Day In America (15:06) is a suite made of many movements. It opens with a slow martial saxophone-tinged dance, but soon (four minutes into the song) hummed backing vocals, a guitar that sounds like a hammered dulcimer, skipping drums and repetitive saxophone intone a minimalist concerto. And then we hear influences ranging from medieval dances to jazz and soul. I'm Not Laughing At You (11:38) is equally unstable but in a less pleasant way. The murky blues Cows (9:58) combines suspense-filled guitar pattern, looped backing vocals, and droning saxophone for what sounds like an apocalyptic doomsday chant. The lively rhythm of standout Couch Potato (11:44) briefly evokes Van Morrison before settling in a "Bob Dylan with saxophone" mode, and before disappearing in the usual downcast whispered maze of words and notes. The real attraction is the backing band for most of the album. However, his longest song yet, Bay Of Kotor (23:14) opens with intricate guitar playing, sounding like a simplified Leo Kottke, and this time it's the voice that steals the show, not because it sings, but because it keeps changing tone and style of diction. Alas, there are a good ten minutes of redundant stuff (not sure if it can be called "music") and even a couple of minutes of spoken word with no instrumental accompaniment.

Joey Always Smiled (2019) with That Dog's violinist Petra Haden yielded a few more of these unrestrained monologues: Parakeet Prison (16:51), that Haden seasons with lugubrious piano and eerie vocals; and standout 1983 MTV Era Music Is the Soundtrack to Outcasts Being Bullied by Jocks (19:29), wrapped in an unusually dense arrangement (vibraphone, drum-machine, piano, multi-tracked vocals). But most of it, including Spanish Hotels Are Echoey (12:11), is spoken-word indulgence with little or no music.