this is a thread for "mistress" by red house painters

Well you got me to pull out this album to find out. Because I haven't heard it in 15 years. I mean yeah every once in awhile I would pull out the song "Strawberry Hill" but I literally have not heard the entirety of the Rollercoaster album for 15 years. So this feels really fucking weird, but yeah. Katy Song is unbelievably brilliant. Mistress has a kind of anonymous royalty to the rhythm or something...it's not a waltz, but it somehow hints at being a waltz. It's great music, to be sure.

Anyway I could write a whole book about this album, but you want this thread to be for only one track, so...sigh.

"Even if your cheap career depended on it"

I actually like the piano version better, quite haunted

This track just came up on iTunes shuffle, my goodness does it ever slay the rest of my library...

Which version?

ah, the days when the 4AD label was sort of a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval"...

but yeah, that piano version can stop you dead in your tracks...

that's some pretty great analysis, curt1s. for me this song has always been so much in the shadow of the preceeding song that i never really paid a lot attention to it. it was like a song to rinse "katy song". somehow neutral, soothing, calming but not with a character of its own. it's blurry due to the weird mix of the instruments as you describe. concerning the lyrics doesn't it speak of someone dying who is looking for the company of a girl? in other words i doubt the "sunlight through the curtain on the morning after the worst day in your life" part. something has to be said about the last 40 seconds where kozelek sings repeatedly "ahhahahaha". it is like some kind of release. for the first time in the song his voice sings a melody. and at the same time he doesn't say anything anymore. probably not such a weird coincidence. i don't have a lot of use for the piano version. somehow it reminds me of george winston. wyndham hill, fusion, new age and all that stuff. here are the complete lyrics:

the light color in the room
the sunshine seeping in
doesn't mix with the black of
death's angel looming in
i've had enough of the
brutal beatings and name callings
to lose me to this bed
bruised internally
eternally
your praise little gifts you spent your money
and stuffed me with
didn't amount to anything
the attention i need is much more serious
a kind of weight you couldn't lift
even if your cheap career
depended on it
i need someone much more
mysterious
to be my miss
to be my mistress

Not sure about these interpretations, but this song is ... yeah, huge for me.

Which version?

The original, non piano version. The one that sounds like a hazy, underwater opiate blissed out dream world in heaven.

Not sure about these interpretations

I'm sorry, Mother Superior, not the ruler again

sorry too. i abdicate immediately.

Seriously, though, there's no fixed interpretation in my head that I feel like putting forth here, but the "longing for a girl" thing just struck me as backwards -- it always read to me, just literally, as sending someone away!

Yeah, the tension here is the beautiful music bucking up against what seems to me to be an extremely bitter set of lyrics ...

It's on threads like this that I suddenly feel a slight pang of regret for eBaying so much 4AD stuff about three years ago. I was going to point out how great the version is on The 13-Year Itch comp, but became momentarily confused about chronology (that was July '93 but that double LP was...May, right? And yet I had it in my head that the 13-YI comp was the first time I'd heard the song), went to find the CD and...it's long gone. I don't think I even ripped it.

1993 really was the last great 4AD year, wasn't it?

not sure what you are talking about, michael. there are two 1993 versions of the song from rollercoaster (4ad). the guitar and the piano version. then i have two live versions, one from 1995 on retrospective (4ad?) and the other from "little drummer boy" from 2006. i think nothing beats the first noisy guitar version.

it always read to me, just literally, as sending someone away!

I was amazed to find Michael Jones the last poster on an ILM thread, and wow it's about a record I know. I bought this CD, with two versions of the song, in Malmo late last year.

I'm not sure that the LP is really very good; I was a bit disappointed by its drones and dreariness. It feels (self-) indulgent. This one song is surely one of the better ones.

Come to think of it, I didn't even know Mike liked RHP.

Haha yes Alex, needs someone more mysterious etc. -- haha I'm just surprised by describing that as "longing," since it reads more as a criticism of someone else

the longing part is coming straight out of your brain, not mine nabisco. i just wrote that he is "looking for the company of a girl". but longing could be right too. he is not happy with the girl who is there and he would like to be with another one, not with no one. that's one of the most common settings in the world.

I may be misremembering this entirely, but I was sure the version on the 13-Year Itch compilation (only available - for £2! - from the ICA during 4AD's week-long residency there in July '93) was different again from the two versions on CAD 3008 (aka "Rollercoaster"). In fact, this suggests it was a remix of some sort. And, frustratingly, it's the only track on that comp not to have a preview clip on that link. That comp was definitely the first time I'd heard "Your Ghost" or "Desire Lines". I don't know what I got for it on eBay. Probably a tenner.

What did you spend the tenner on?

Seriously, though, there's no fixed interpretation in my head that I feel like putting forth here, but the "longing for a girl" thing just struck me as backwards -- it always read to me, just literally, as sending someone away!

― nabisco, Monday, January 26, 2009 4:09 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, the tension here is the beautiful music bucking up against what seems to me to be an extremely bitter set of lyrics ...

― tylerw, Monday, January 26, 2009 4:16 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ otm

No one cares about this, but I would like to record that I altogether misremembered upthread. This LP (I didn't know it was caled Rollercoaster) I got last summer I think; it was the Ocean Beach CD I bought in Malmo recently.

So? Well it's Ocean Beach that disappoints, and on which I can find very little really to enjoy. This - first? - LP is different: I do get something out of it. 'Grace Cathedral Park' is smashing, other songs have their virtues. 'Mistress' does stand out, and yes the "hazy opiate swirl" is a good arrangement for what could otherwise be a plain piano ballad - as it is on the extra track, to which I've just listened.

The structure mentioned at the top of the thread seems to be fairly normal for RHP, based on those two LPs I know. I still find too much idle repetition across these records, outros that don't go anywhere for 3 minutes. Sun Kil Moon seem to work differently, at least till the last, April LP.

you are wrong, pinefox, i care.

the first release is "down colourful hill", pinefox. six songs and almost 45 minutes long. i think officially it is an ep but that's rather misleading. btw it is very good and i'd say it is more austere, more barren than the others. the most depressive of them all.

you are right concerning "ocean beach", it was a disappointment. as was the second self-titled with the bridge on the cover. there is a lot of repetition in the songs and the real highlights are missing.

concerning highlights i am very surprised that you don't mention the song before "mistress", pinefox: "katy song". it has always been my favourite kozelek song. the way it slowly builds up somehow it reminds me of "cortez the killer". only mellower. it is a sad song but it is not depressive. there is an incredible beauty in that song. and when it changes in the middle when the melody comes to the fore, it is one of these magic, precious moments where music strikes you like a lightning which are so rare. and then he starts humming. why does that song ever end?

I always forget that this song is only 4 minutes long, it feels so much longer.

Great song. I always think he's singing, "I need someone much more mysterious to be my Easter egg." Better.

LOL "to be my easter egg!" LOLOLOL

I am listening to the Rollercoaster LP again now; still sure this song is a highlight.

I don't rate 'Katy Song' as others do, though I quite like its sleepy arpeggiated opening; I don't generally think that pop songs should have the word 'song' in the title. But I am always struck by the lines about London (this *is* that song, right?) - what is it, 'you've got family there, don't you / well that's more than I could ever give you'?

That reminds me, I was a bit surprised when I realized that the 'Brockwell Park' on the other LP was, presumably ... Brockwell Park.

'moorestown' off last year's Sun Moon Kil album is an amazing song

that's the one, pf. i am not sure if "katy song" is a pop song. not in the way that "dancing queen" is at least.

Liked this song alright in the past but nowadays it just sounds like Dashboard Confessional under the guise of "slowcore" (totally serious):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlRomIZeNZQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf6EjX0KRIY

i'm not going to listen to that, but I will say that it was quite weird to me, whenever the 'emo' thing started, that RHP were pointed out as the grandfathers of that, when RHP, to me, seemed like a very personal thing (to me) and I was startled to find out that they apparently meant something to an entirely different generation with entirely different tastes.

that dashboard confessional song sounds more like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxnvAZ747NY

also people who prefer the piano version of "Mistress" are missing the point entirely