your favorite of the mark kozelek canon

a girl i know loves red house painters. shes a total party girl as well, its sort of incongruous in a way

Where is the love for Old Ramon!?!

Cruiser!!!

Right here. It's all right here. By far the best RHP album. I believe this so deeply, that I can barely listen to anything that came before despite my insane love for his entire output.

Right here. It's all right here. By far the best RHP album.

I really don't understand this at all! it's so disappointing.

To be honest, my favorites are Katysong and Strawberry Hill but people should also take a listen to some of the more obscure stuff. There are a lot of gems there.

listened to "Drop" but couldnt get into it - liked the guitar part at the end a lot and his voice does sound good. havne't listened to Michael yet.

I think the bridge album is the worst. The only decent track is the new version of New Jersey (which stomps all over the rollercoaster version and then puts out back with the trash). But other than that -- dud.

Michael is a great song.

However, judged as a whole, I still stand by my prior statement.

Uncle Joe
Smokey (demo version from the Shanti project disc, NOT the version on Old Ramon)
Ruth Marie
Up To My Neck In You (ac dc cover)

Michael and Katy Song are definitely my favourites.

"I buried my first victim when I was nineteen
Went through her bedroom and the pockets of her jeans
Found her letters that said so many things that really hurt me bad
I'll never breath her name again", etc.

Or do I just have a demented imagination? (apologies on any lyrics I've misheard...of course, that might be the whole problem...)

"Cassius Clay was hated more than Sonny Liston
Some like KK Downing more than Glenn Tipton
Some like Jim Nabors, some Bobby Vinton
I like 'em all"

He's comparing Downing to Tipton, and both were guitarists for Judas Priest. So I assume that's the only Tipton he's referring to in the song. I also read that the Eleanor in the song is an old friend of his.

The pinnacle is still "Medicine Bottle" to me, though "Cruiser" comes very close.

1. The song takes its name from the Priest guitarist, but is not narrated by him

2. The "serial killer" verse is as ambiguous as his relationship with the girl in question. "Buried" and "victim" can be read as metaphors for the ways early romantic love goes wrong, or they could be quite literal. IMHO it's that tension, and the light it casts on the ways of love etc that makes this verse interesting.

Kind of like the tension in "Carry Me Ohio" - can't count all the lovers I've burned through/so why do I still burn for you? vs. sorry that I could never love you back...

Amazing live. go for it.
-- Chris 'Crusty' V (thebing...), May 21st, 2005.

He is amazing live, and it's worth going. But do be prepared to mostly stand around swaying and nodding your head while squinting a bit with that "listening intently" look.

Roll he does; r0x0r he does not.

Go see him! "Mistress" was unbelievable.

Not going to deny any of the above but "Duk Koo Kim" has been swirling around my head for the past few days after I got some really terrible news about a friend of mine. It's just shitty that the same guy who wrote those lyrics lost the thread so abusively/idiotically/defensively etc

also good timing for me as I listened to Admiral Fells and April last night then listened to Among the Leaves (which I still kind of like) and its pretty clear something shifted in his interest in writing songs right there, because everything after that is an explosion of all the shit that didn't work on that album taken to the nth level. Really, let's pretend he died after Admiral Fells Promises and left a really good catalog behind.

― akm, Monday, 8 March 2021 14:47 (one hour ago) link

I've more or less written your exact post in a hundred different ways, but yes- there were interviews near when AFP came out where he mentioned being obsessed with Segovia and some other classical players and deciding that with AFP he was going to set out to make the must beautiful album he possibly could. And he did! The reception was sort of lukewarm. Regardless, it is obvious that he poured his entire self into it and likely burned himself out. Understandably, Among the Leaves was him shifting gears and being looser. Probably felt nice to do something like that in contrast to AFP. Then with some traumatic losses of acquaintances and probably some midlife crisis feelings, he leaned in on an even rawer, cathartic, even more unfussy songwriting style with the last Desertshore collab and it must have felt so right that he went even further for the Benji material. Then all of the excessive accolades around that record- all the attention, the contrast with the reception of THAT vs all the hard work he put into AFP... I think the personal life stuff, the discrepancy in those album receptions, the spike in fans and attention- I think he just unraveled. He got it in his head that he was onto something new and daring and brave and punk rock. He got himself into trouble with other public figures and did all sorts of provoking. Probably feeling like he was creating this iconic interesting eccentric artist persona though it. But he is SO many albums deep into it. Little hints of musical beauty pop up here and there but this whole catalog of late period SKM is him going against his better instincts. Because his natural instincts made the straightforward singer songwriter stuff of his early career and he thinks that's all BORING now.

Conclusion: he is completely delusional, and I agree, just pretend he quit after AFP perhaps. HOWEVER, also pretend that the song Young Love was the actual final track of AFP because it would and should have been his swan song. If you read this whole comment and don't know that song and also hate him, please listen to that song and get back to me I'm legitimately curious what you think.

I got into RHP in the early 00s when they were about as obscure a band as you could find - I only learned about them by trawling through AllMusic reviews whilst working long night shifts at a hotel, and had to go to the one specialty CD store in my home city to buy their albums as imports.

They had this sombre, tortured singer who I only knew the look of because of his small part in Almost Famous. Their haunting, mournful music spoke to me in a way few other artists have before or since - the lyrics and vocals seemed to come from this impossibly deep well of suffering and sensitivity.

The fact that no one else I knew had even heard of them, let alone ever heard their stuff played on the radio, made it all the more special, like it was this secret only I knew about. I listened to those first few RHP albums constantly and loved Ghosts of the Great Highway and his AC/DC covers album too (though it was different to the older stuff).

Fair to say pretty that much everything that's happened with Mark in the 20 years since then (and particularly the last 10) is one massive, deeply depressing WTF.

You weren't a fan of the first 10 years of SKM?

I enjoyed those records (although they were a bit of a departure), but I meant more Koz's gradually increasing public presence/'fame' and the slowly dawning realisation that he was this creepy, disturbed guy.

I saw him do a live solo gig circa 2005 in a pub and he was completely sullen and disengaged, despite the crowd consisting almost entirely of ultra-hardcore fans like myself who were thrilled to see him. He just seemed to resent us for being there or something, it was weird. He finished his set abruptly and just shrugged off stage and out of the pub like a moody adolescent busker - it was the furthest thing possible from '15 year music vet and beloved cult icon'.

I guess I'd just assumed his persona was at least some sort of 'act' and that he actually had a functioning personality underneath (kinda like Robert Smith who's had a stable relationship his entire adult life despite perpetually singing about doomed love).

To find out that he really didn't, and then the unravelling that's happened since Pitchfork anointed him has been pretty brutal to watch.

Right. I am relieved that I don't have to feel conflicted about supporting him anymore because he refuses to make anything listenable, so there's nothing for me to support. Sometimes I research the "current SKM fan" as an anthropologist because I'm amazed that there are loads of people that gobble all these recent albums up. At this point it seems he wouldn't be able to disappoint them if he tried, and he really seems like he's trying doesn't it.

I saw him do a live solo gig circa 2005 in a pub and he was completely sullen and disengaged,

Hah, I saw him do the same in the fall of 1998 - just bitching about the mix, then his life, so he was pulling this shit for years.

Still adore the first Sun Kil Moon and recently got into "Perils".

ultimately the revelations about him and the way they align with his current music to the point where there's no distance between the shitty personality and the shitty music at all have made me sort of believe that all of the rhp and early skm stuff is a mask that he put on to make people like him or make people think he was profound, and even that stuff contains lyrics like

Won't you whisper in my ear?
You look so good against my mirror
And you're my baby full of joy
You're my erotic brown eyed toy
You're my exotic black haired toy

so fuck him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEf_Wfqou3I

He just seemed to resent us for being there or something

hasn't he written songs about how he resents that his hardcore fans who have been most of his audience for the past two decades are nearly all men instead of the attractive young women who used to make up some of the audience for rhp in the early days

Yeah

Sunshine in Chicago makes me feel pretty sad
My band played here a lot in the nineties when we had
Lots of female fans and fuck, they all were cute
Now, I just sign posters for guys in tennis shoes

Oops

Sunshine in Chicago makes me feel pretty sad
My band played here a lot in the nineties when we had
Lots of female fans and fuck, they all were cute
Now, I just sign posters for guys in tennis shoes

preferred the first post tbh

that is a funny verse TBF. And that verse from Old Ramon is fucking awful; I remember when that finally came out how much those lyrics bugged me. Anyway: RHP were never a great live band, in case anyone is wondering. I saw them probably a dozen times, and I remember one really good show. Their last show, which was after Old Ramon was finally released, was such a slog I left early.

I might have written that here already but when I saw him during the Benji tour he explained the reason he cancelled the previous Montreal show a few years prior was that he hooked-up with this gorgeous Torontonian and after having sex all night he lost his voice and couldn't possibly sing the next show.

hate it when i fuck my voice out

thank god I have posting on ilx as an outlet

More grist for the Toronto vs. Montreal feud.

I remember checking out the rollercoaster s/t in the early 00s and feeling immensely disappointed because it was nowhere near as depressing as the critics made it out to be, so I never explored the rest of his output.

Sometimes I worry, Pom.

Haha, that was almost twenty years ago. Almost everything had to achieve the same degree of anguish as the fifth movement of Schnittke's 4th String Quartet or I wasn't interested.

I feel like Pomenitul would have been my friend 20 years ago. If I'd had friends.

I've made some progress in the interim, but I can still be your trve miserablist friend.

I feel like I'm reading a eulogy thread

rollercoaster is one of my favorite albums, and i love depressing music, but I don't think it's really 'depressing'. it's melancholy.

(XP)
Poll: Is Mark Kozelek dead to you?
- Yes
- No

OK in conclusion I will pretend Young Love was the actual final song on AFP, he quits music, then a few years later the material from Among The Leaves comes out but as part of a SKM b-sides and rarities comp. I'll just assume that's how it went down.

'Pristine' by Snail Mail sounds like 'San Geronimo' sped up. That was driving me crazy.

https://pitchfork.com/news/sun-kil-moon-mark-kozelek-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-by-seven-more-women/

real real bleak stuff

He's a predator with a practiced regimen of luring and raping women less than half his age in city after city all over the world. There are surely more of these stories.

What a repulsive excuse for a human being.

I feel like I need to take a shower after reading about this scumbag.

you can hear the rot from the start on rollercoaster; from grace cathedral park:

Tell me why are you like this? Are you the same with anyone?
Save me from my sickness and tell me why do you treat me like this?
Tell me why are you like this? Are you the same with anyone?
Save me from my sickness and tell me why are you like this?

i think i know the answers to those questions!!

i never want to hear his music again

I've been there for a few years (ever since that weird unilateral feud with War on Drugs), but this really reinforces it x1000.

nels cline 1, koz 0

This I guess is the AITA thread referenced in the Pitchfork article, although the original seems to be gone now.

AITA for feeling weird about my girlfriend talking on the phone with her celebrity hero? https://t.co/rmCeysvTCP pic.twitter.com/UmsxJjldcS

— Am I the Asshole? (@AITA_reddit) October 16, 2019