A.D. 1991 The Slint delivered an epochal truth to rock: to create those expansive, shifting, almost impressionistic atmospheres, those in which eternity and even more so the non-time are sought, that music in which the illusory and fleeting thrill of the moment is banned in favor of the emotional impact evoked by a set of fluid images, by a musical flow that now returns to itself and now lives on subtle changes and not on the frenetic spasms of hard rock dynamism, in short, all that idea of music that we encompass in that ridiculous yet essential term called post-rock, it adopted as its distinctive feature, well, to create all this only a bass, a drum, and a guitar were enough.
Good job Talk Talk, eh, good job. You are among my favorite groups and I'm not going back on my word, but to bring to life that mystical, spiritual, jazzy asceticism of Laughing Stock, you employed seven violas, two cellos, two double basses, and a fair squad of winds. Well done Dirty Three, Ocean Songs is an album where I've lost neurons, but hell, you can't talk about Dirty Three without the first comment being "the violin! That damn violin!". Good too, the Goodspeed You! Black Emperor (whom I already like less but still, I like them), however, damn, there are eight of you and yet at times you do not avoid slipping into minutes of almost deadly boredom. And then oh, nothing to say about Sigur Ros, nothing to say about Radiohead.
They all look towards the same goal, in my opinion. To demonstrate that "rock" music can produce that music that doesn't seek the moment, but the continuum, and that paradoxically manages to live with more intensity when the piece has turned to its end because just a little while ago some images began to emerge in the listener, a bit disordered, some that are not understood. But how much effort you put into it. How exasperate your tracks... damn, Radiohead has created a monster with Kid A. A broad, boundless album, different from rock, certainly ethereal and impressionistic as I said above. But really it's not clear where Kid A wants to go, it's not clear if there's life behind those electronic oceans, behind those distant and distorted voices. Those on the Radiohead album seem like sketches of unfinished music; it's impossible that the songs were fine as they were. Music of great class and immense emotional depth, but Radiohead is missing. In the attempt to remove boundaries, they removed themselves. (In my mind this is very clear, I don't know how much I've made my thought accessible with these phrases)
Rock is a discipline that requires grace and sprezzatura. I can almost see Thom Yorke, presenting himself before the indisputable judgment of Music, all puffed up and conceited, offering her the first copy of Kid A...
And Music listens impassibly and rules: "A damn rock album! A damn rock album, and melodic to boot! With this face, you show up to me with this album? And where did Mozart, Ligeti, Stravinsky go? Light music! They make light music and act all high and mighty!". And the same goes for GY!BE, how they give it to themselves, the GY!BE.
Then oh, far be it from me to downsize a group I respect a lot like Radiohead. However, Mark Kozelek wouldn't do that.
"I would have done this..." and he offers Music a copy of "Down Colorful Hill". As a Roman rapper would say (not the best, but MY Roman rapper) "it takes humility my friends. It takes humility and well-done music..." Down Colorful Hill represents this. And the album speaks for itself.
The debut of Red House Painters sacrifices nothing to be what it is. "24" lives so much that it daydreams of an old age that disrupts the plans of a youth that dreams of suicide and then flees astride an almost sly guitar during the last minute. Kozelek (we've heard it in every way) is present throughout this album, not hiding behind heaps of electronics: he's present as Nick Drake was, putting all his drama into theme.
Mark, however, makes it clear, I don't want to die without you. In "Medicine Bottle", it takes him five minutes to say it, after his stories about his romantic relationship with a certain Japanese woman found in the textures of Anthony Koutsos and Jerry Vessel, essential and yet so full (even in the silences, as in the best Slint and Codeine) one of the most unforgettable dresses of the '90s: one cannot avoid talking about the rhythm section of Medicine Bottle, how much it suffers and yet still believes in it, almost trying for redemption after those verses, helped by a guitar that distorts and tries to emerge, yet ultimately it is forced to succumb again and be reabsorbed into the "flow", which in fact, after the scarce ten minutes of the track, takes everything away.
In the eleven minutes of "Down Colorful Hill", this unity unravels. The drums develop an unwavering march, of an enthusiasm (?) that the downtrodden guitar and voice cannot follow. One of the most fluid tracks of the album, as it constantly returns to itself, like a stream of consciousness. "Japanese to English" opens a part of the album with slightly more articulated compositions, without for this fading the naked, heartbreaking essentiality. The second redemption of the album is here, still around 3/5 of the track, with a sudden ignition of guitar and bass rather melodic and almost pop, which is unforgettable. The penultimate song is "Lord Kill The Pain", a brilliant folk pursuit conceived deliberately in antithesis to the general mood of the album (to which, however, it returns in some passages, especially at the end, perhaps the most interesting moments of the album). The only track of the album that I find partially out of place, undoubtedly the one I find least interesting, even in its absolute dignity in terms of absolute value. "Michael" still speaks the language of folk, but dives into a very delicate, heartfelt epitaph to the lost friend, in the power of the innocence of those questions that even a child could ask: Michael, where are you?
After "Michael", the first album of Red House Painters ends, but it lives within the listener, still well beyond the last note.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Medicine Bottle (09:49)
giving into love and sharing my time
letting someone into my misery
i told it all step by step
how i landed on the island
and how i swam across the sea
and it crosses my mind
that i may wake to a knife in me
no more breath in my hair
or ladies' underwear
tossed up over the alarm clock
blood dripping from the bed
to a neatly written poem
a heartfelt last line reading
there is no more mystery
it it going to happen my love
it's all in your head she said
morning after nightmare
you're building a wall she said
higher than the both of us
so try living life
instead of hiding in the bedroom
show me a smile
and i'll promise not to leave you
it happened under a rainy cloud
passing through the dark south
we went into a big house
and slept in a small bed
i didn't know you then
as well as you of me
we talked of our sad lives
and we went off separately
i found your overseas souvenirs
holiday greeting cards
and some long forgotten high school fears
it's all in my head i said
banging a piano
i've not been so alone i thought
since kicking in the womb
i drank so much tea
i wrote my letters in kanji
around the block i walked and walked
pretending you were with me
not wanting to die out here
without you
the hurting never ends
like birthdays and old friends
we forget what is flesh blood and bone is human
turning phone lines to airlines
unwilling to face
the love is found on the inside not the outside
and like a medicine bottle
in the cabinet i'll keep you
and like a medicine bottle
in my hand i will hold you
and swallow you slowly
as to last me a lifetime
without holding too tight
i do not want to lose
the thrill that it gives me
to look out from my window
and scowl at the houses
from my world in the bedroom
it's all in my head she read
in her girlfriend's self-help book
it's all his own making
a war with himself
like two sides of a wall
that separates two countries
he shuts out the world
and wants only to love you
not wanting to die out here
without you
06 Michael (05:21)
michael, where are you now?
somehow in my excitement the last time you called,
it slipped again to ask your hidden whereabouts
i got a lead from your old triple ex-girlfriend, she said
"i heard he lost his mind again"
"again?" i said
i didn't know that you ever did
michael, where are you now?
sleeping through the morning in flannel impaired
getting high in southern air
shoeless, sandy eveing down the unfamiliar
last whiff of salt-water freedom
skipping shells in the dead zone
with the ghost on your side
of the state borderline
whispering
"take it. . ."
do you remember our first subway ride?
our first heavy metal haircuts?
our last swim on the east coast?
and me with my ridiculous looking pierced nose?
i remember your warm smile in the sun
the daydreaming boy without a shirt on
the birmingham barfly father
left the mother of three sons
you're the oldest juvenile delinquent bum
my best friend
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Other reviews
By egebamyasi
Kozelek pours all his existential pain into his chords and lyrics.
One realizes what a masterpiece it is once its taste is fully savored.
By my bloody syndicate1
This album tells the story of a man irreparably scarred by drugs, loneliness, and depression—a man who cannot even scream, spit, or get angry.
Down Colorful Hill marks the stride of a new artistic dimension forgotten since the days of Nick Drake.