god do you look pollable in the dark: red house painters / sun kil moon / mark kozelek albums poll

Easy for me - Ghosts. That album just blew me away and still does, and I found it more listenable (i.e. not wrist-slitting) than RHP. Not that it's upbeat or sunny...

Is Rock'n'Roll Singer an EP?

yep, but maybe i should've included it anyway

think old ramon is the dark horse among the rhp records. i have always really loved the electric guitar tones on kozelek's records but on "void" it's exactly right, a kind of invasive and pure stream. first time i really engaged with old ramon i was driving over a snow-covered highway at night. as much as the lyrics concern l.a. and summer, the record really suited that environment—a kind of slow, cold travel.

It's a nice record, but it never really opened up to me like the other RHP-albums did. It has a few great tunes, though, Michigan is a standout I think. Plus it hasa lot of that nice, slow burning guitar. I think it foreshadows Sun Kil Moon somewhat, but that's of course easy to say in retrospect.

Ocean Beach.

"Ghosts" is his biggest achievement to date I think, in so many ways

Have listened more to Old Ramon in the last few years. The John Denver song alone is so killer.

Ghosts I guess. But Old Ramon is so amazing. Glad to see it get love here.

think old ramon is the dark horse among the rhp records. i have always really loved the electric guitar tones on kozelek's records but on "void" it's exactly right, a kind of invasive and pure stream.

yeah. i love the tone on cruiser. and also that he's obv an amazing guitarist technically, but that song is just these couple of chords drug into the ground. and there are cringeworthy lyrics at a couple of points, but he's just like 'whatever, fuck it'

old ramon is also insanely lugubrious, so maybe don't listen to it if you're a huge second amendment person

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voting for Rollercoaster, even though there's at least 2 extended dirges on that record I could do without.

Ghosts

rollercoaster, incl. every single dirge

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Voting for Rollercoaster, even though there's at least 2 extended dirges on that record I could do without.

"funhouse" is awesome. i never remember what "mother" is like so it is legitimately scary every time

songs for a blue guitar was my runner-up

Mark Kozelek should write a ten-minute lament about how few people voted in this thread! Sheesh, what gives?!

didn't see this poll.

Down Colorful Hill not getting a vote is a damn shame, but I would have thrown mine to Rollercoaster or Ocean Beach.

<3 SKM & he has had a consistent career, but this is a man who peaked early imo.

xp: ten-minute laments

duration of poll poll was too short

Ocean Beach

If I'd known no one would have voted for it, I would have cast a protest vote for Old Ramon. Great album, just not as great as great as Ghosts...

never heard of the album that won. is it good? i thought rollercoaster would win this in a walk.

glad to see people actually recognizing Ghosts of the Great Highway as his masterwork. it's one of my top 5 all time fave albums and every song is stunning but part of what's so great about it is hearing him stretch his legs on stuff like Si Paloma, I think.

ghosts of the great highway is an awesome record that is very different from rollercoaster

hard for me to explain exactly how, but kozelek's sense for melody evolved a lot over the red house painters discography, and i think ghosts may be its zenith

huh, totally missed this poll. might've voted old ramon -- it's not as INTENSE as the earlier RHP stuff, but now that I am well into my 30s it's the one I like hearing the most these days.

i think i was the person who voted for april. can't remember if i voted in my own poll.

missed this. would have voted ocean beach, probably, or rollercoaster. ghosts is great but those albums meant more to me when they came out. but I do think that duk koo kim is one of his greatest songs.

I missed this. Would have been stuck between Ghosts and Bridge, and voted the latter to make sure it didn't get a goose egg. Ivo did a great job making a mixtape with Retrospective too.

...and somehow resisting the urge to call it "Redrospective"!

the original title was red perspective iirc but changed due to lameness

Mark Kozelek should write a ten-minute lament about how few people voted in this thread! Sheesh, what gives?!

i often weigh in on poll threads that are of interest of me, but then completely forget to vote. pretty sure this was one of those instances.

anyways, surprised that ppl like ocean beach so much. i think it's arguably his weakest?

april is underrated prolly. good record, that imo

april seems like a refinement of what he was going for on old ramon. just long enveloping, repeating things. would've voted for either record, but i think i prefer april. both are tangled up in times of not-great-life

The new Desertshore album is pretty much a Red House Painters joint.

Trying out the Desertshore/Koz album again, as it exists in a weird netherpoint between Benji and what came before. Pretty similar hit:miss ratio, though "Livingstone Bramble" might be the only song he's ever written that's actually kind of funny. The band pushes him a bit, to a creepy crawl on "You Are Not Of My Blood" and a pleasantly skippy pace on "Katowice or Cologne" and "Don't Ask About My Husband." "Brothers" is a really gorgeous closer that actually supports the confessional style nicely. The rest is a mess, sometimes in the same song - I don't care for "Sometimes I Can't Stop," but the way he climbs into his falsetto after mourning Jason Molina is very effective. I'm more bothered by his recent reticence to really use his voice than anything in his lyrics - the guy can still sing when he makes an effort.

One thing I find encouraging on listening back to other SKM albums is that he tends to change it up significantly from release to release, so I'll be surprised (and disappointed) if the next one is Benji, mk ii.

Anyway it's been too long removed for me to rank the RHP albums but as far as the SKM/collab stuff goes:
Great Highway > April > Admiral Fell Promises > Perils From the Sea > Benji = Desertshore > Among the Leaves.

Never bothered with Tiny Cities or any of the eleventeen live LPs or Finally or (lol) the Christmas album.

and this is the tracklist for the new one, out in june

01 The Possum
02 Birds of Flims
03 With a Sort of Grace I Walked to the Bathroom to Cry
04 Garden of Lavender
05 Cry Me a River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blues
06 Ali/Spinks 2
07 Little Rascals
08 This Is My First Day and I'm Indian and I Work at a Gas Station

Can't imagine the critical resurgence will keep up if "The Possum" is any indication.

08 This Is My First Day and I'm Indian and I Work at a Gas Station

:|

I hope to hell that's an instrumental. (Incidentally, releasing a multitracked instrumental guitar album is probably the best thing Koz could do right now.)

Cry Me a River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blues

I'm sure there's gonna be some trenchant cultural commentary in that one...

Fingers crossed for another cringeworthy account of his sex life.

"Garden of Lavender" obviously

song titles suggest more of that whole "stream-of-consciousness narrative" thing, but we shall see.

Visiting San Francisco earlier this week sent me back to the pre-stream-of-conciousness Kozelek albums. Such a shame there's so many people who haven't heard these album and won't even give them a chance. There's some deeply beautiful tunes on them.

Anyway, had the Mark Kozelek & Desertshore album been included here, I'd expect it'd have done well. And "Randy Quaid", on the first Desertshore album, really hooked me today. Lovely vocal over all that jangly swirl.

Oh, Ocean Beach wasn't as good as I remembered it, but Tiny Cities is still great.

I revisited Benji recently and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, though one replay was enough to tide me over for a while. I think it’s the kind of album I should revisit maybe once a year.

April is my favorite if i'm being honest with myself. ghosts and perils from the sea are close runners up though

Been revisiting Mark's work and am now a convert to the brilliance of "Perils". As others have said, other albums are very nice but the emotional state required to listen thankfully doesn't come around very often.

Admiral Fell Promises all the way, though Ghosts scratches a different itch and becomes my favorite half of the time.

Been revisiting The Finally LP cover album most recently and it's really beautiful as well.

Album poll is a bit unsatisfying. I like a lot of the Red House Painters'stuff, but think he peaked with the early Sun Kil Moon stuff - April, Ghosts, and Admiral Fell Promises are three of his my favourites, and Tiny Cities is very enjoyable.

Is Kozelek ever going to get the full ILM tracks and albums poll treatment?

I probably totally overlooked this thread in 2012.

Would have been helpful if he retired the Sun Kil Moon moniker around 2013-14 and launched his unhinged blog raps project under a new name. It's exhausting to add a disclaimer every time I need to identify his music as some of my favorites.