Red House Painters
Shock Me

As a child, I used to read and look at guitar magazines from riccardoni, and one day in one of these, I read more or less that post-reunion Ace Frehley of Kiss was someone who [literally] stuttered music because he was consumed by drugs. I know almost nothing about Kiss, but Rivers Cuomo - who, I discover today, is named after Gianni Rivera and Gigi Riva - and Mark Kozelek were both kids in the eighties, and it’s normal that they were influenced: so I found Ace Frehley hanging on the wall of Cuomo's garage, indeed In The Garage, when I had already realized that yes, I liked guitars, but maybe Queensrÿche wasn't exactly for me. Then came this EP from the Red House Painters confirming that better someone like The Spaceman Frehley, drugged but capable of songs like Shock Me, than a sober and hyper-technical cocaine addict of those who now do clinics and have milf wives. The debut of Weezer - with In The Garage - and this EP were released in ninety-four, three months apart.

Twenty years later, the year of Benji and the ensuing spotlight for Mark Kozelek. Completely arbitrary that the "success" with the public arrived now for him, soured, a bit muddled, and more than ever unnecessarily verbose. It must be said, though, that while we sadly common public write reviews on the internet, status updates on social media, comment on something, or express ourselves in any way, Kozelek has always chosen to throw every communicative and expressive urgency into his music - extremist and almost ascetic to the absurd, in this - accompanying with his drawling singing, with his unique, ever-changing but always fascinating timbre. Therefore, it is right to forgive him for the lows (among so many highs), the first blowjobs in songs, his words on the insignificant autobiographical, and to finally give him recognition: because while we’ve fretted among song links, playlists, inside-jokes, and words significant only to ourselves, he has always preferred to write them, the songs. To gift them to himself and us.

A common mortal Kozelek, on social media, would have posted the YouTube link to Shock Me by Kiss and would have written, I don't know, "great track, I'm really fond of it". But Kozelek is an artist, and for this fact, we should be grateful.

There are two versions of Shock Me here, both transfigured compared to the sound and the classic moldy-rock direction of the original: the first is an electric and distorted sadcore, with a canonically dark paintersian mood, anticipating the vibe of Ocean Beach; the second is a ballad for piano and acoustic guitar that ends with an instrumental version of the beautiful A Million + 8 Things, by the very first Red House Painters. Both are unforgettable, with a Kozelek whose indolence can dismantle and distort - but voluntarily - even the most testosterone-driven and fetish classic rock, to reject it as a depressed, reluctant cry for help. Sundays And Holidays is a voice-and-acoustic on spending holidays at the hospital, and aside from the suggestion of some images, it boasts an elegant fingerpicking, while Three-Legged Cat is a soft and brief nursery rhyme about a not-too-symbolic disability.

For completeness, for completists, and because if you’ve only come to Kozelek this year, you should discover that in the early nineties, his voice had something extra, something special, unique, and inexplicable. But also for anyone else.