POO: Red House Painters

This song has always gotten me; it starts off sounding like one of the band's usual slow, spooky wanderers, but somewhere along the way it blazes up into something full of drama. How? It's a loss-of-innocence song, or a coming-of-age song, and maybe it really is drawn in emo terms. But there's also something incredibly un-emo about it, something almost literary: Kozolek manages to come at the thing from two different perspectives, even using different parts of his vocal range to delineate different points of view. It's very nearly a short story, and it's through that approach that he gets to capture both sides of that loss-of-innocence: at moments it seems like a kindness ("the good things that we've done for you" / "show you life"), and at moments it seems violating and cruel ("we know who you are / I read your palm while you were sleeping").

It's hard not to imagine that the "new kid" in this song is Kozolek, whose backstory seems to have had him troubled and drugged-up by the age of 13. The low voice at the opening comes from that point of view, and sets him apart: he sits listening to the kids drink in the next room, "lose control and get louder," thinking of the one girl out there who might worry about him. Sure: emo. But then the voice shoots up an octave, and we're out there, louder, in the other room, talking about the new kid; "he's not like us," "he says nothing," "he's afraid to drive a car." These aren't kind voices, and in the second verse they border on assault. That high Kozolek voice is the perfect vehicle for their taunts -- they know his secrets, they've read his diary. Just imagine: they sing "We know who you are" and it sounds like the scariest thing in the world. The kid is quiet and frightened and they barge in and shout: We know who you are.

But there are those "good things we've done for you," and it's in the chorus that both sides come perfectly together. The chord structure goes from spooky to anthemic, nearly a hymn: "It's our duty," they sing, "as Californians ... to show you life." And just check out the literary value of the arrangement! Suddenly overdubbed voices swim in around the central one, and it's like actually being surrounded by these kids -- maybe frightening, maybe bullying, but right about to take you out and show you the world.

I can't think of many songs where the progress of the music is quite so perfectly and subtly geared to drive home the text of the story; I can't think of many songs that have a "story" on this level in the first place. Emo? No. Emo-as-badthing is one-sided, self-absorbed, personal, solipsistic; this song is none of those. This song, no matter how much the lyrics wander freely into opacity, is a snapshot of something weirdly universal. Who hasn't gotten that mix of fear and excitement when someone grabs you roughly and thrusts you out into a world you don't feel ready for -- whether it's older friends or the "cousins from L.A.?" Who hasn't had some variant of the Kozolek story that seems to be on show here -- going somewhere new and falling in with people who scare and excite you and are ready to drag you out?

So on the train this morning I finally noticed just how well the elements of this song pattern into that story, and I'm absolutely floored.

Also: is it me, or is there a rich history of new-kid-in-California stories that work a lot like this song? Something about it feels very, very Californian, but I can only come up with three referents for what I mean -- something like The Lost Boys, the Karate Kid, and every Coloradoan friend of mine who spent summers in LA with divorced parents and went through exactly all of this.

Incredible note gathered from Kozelek: "The chorus of Strawberry Hill ... was sung by a group of strangers we gathered from outside the Divisadero Street studio where we were recording."

faves right now. picking one...probably Katy's Song b/c its nearly perfect lyrically and pop-wise (and still obsessed with the "rad da ta ta" at the end.) Medicine Bottle and Down Through...cannot believe the lyrics on those. wow. almost makes you wince but its pretty darn amazing at same time.

anyone else think he sounds sooooooooooooooooooooo bay area?

chris (upthread), i was listening to one of his songs in the dark deep woods northern calif and nearly had a panic attack. totally ruined my vacation. m.k. be makin us crazy.

Incredible note gathered from Kozelek: "The chorus of Strawberry Hill ... was sung by a group of strangers we gathered from outside the Divisadero Street studio where we were recording."

-- nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, June 23, 2005 10:25 AM

Shit that song "Dragonflies" is amazing- I just listened to it for the first time while reading along to the lyrics that Chris V. posted up thread- fucking spine-chilling! And I've had the album for years!

Summer Dress

Anyone else gets a tiny bit annoyed when he rhymes "nice" with "nice" on Have You Forgotten?

And my pick would be their cover of the Cars' "All Mixed Up", also one of the best musical recontextualizations I've heard.

SF folx, do you know which studio this was?

― Steve Shasta, Thursday, April 12, 2007 9:10 AM (4 years ago)

I'm pretty sure there used to be a recording studio by where the Little Chihuahua is on by Page Street in one of the old Victorians. I used to get pizza at that Bus Stop pizza when I was a freshman in college and I remember one being around there. I used to live at Page @ Pierce at the time.

Sundays and holidays hits home hard when my wife got sick.

And i started this thread long time ago

Anyone else gets a tiny bit annoyed when he rhymes "nice" with "nice" on Have You Forgotten?

no. find it more annoying that he is the thousandth person to lift that "fade into you" chord progression on the title track

such a weird, flawed record. i don't think i've ever even listened to it all the way through. in my estimation old ramon is a much better weird flawed record and yet with much more egregious lyrical moments

also why do rhp people fixate over katy song? overwrought pretentious lyrics...the only good part is towards the end where he runs that mantra into the ground,

fade into you and blue guitar are both copped from a velvet underground song though

what song? i don't know velvet undergorned's music that well. i always think of it as knocking on heaven's door thing

Tonight: "Shadows". She didn't say anything I didn't already know, so I went home and put on Ocean Beach.

drop for me.

or katy

grace cathedral park.

or katy.

strawberry hill is pretty amazing actually. not sure if i ever listened to it before. i don't understand why it is not on my ipod which has only the first ten songs from rollercoaster. have there been different cd editions? i can't check as i have the cd near frankfurt and i am in berlin now.

I don't think there's been different editions, neither wiki or allmusic had anything about that. So no answer to your little mystery. Maybe your ipod was full?

Void, live @ Hultsfred 1997. I remember how disappointing the studio version seemed in comparison when Old Ramon finally dropped.

Discogs is a great place to find out about all of the versions of something.

I can never figure out if "Funhouse" is really great or really bad.

Make Like Paper, yall. and like welcome to obvioustown but Have You Forgotten has to be one of the greatest singer-songwriter-y tracks released in my lifetime.

most recent obsession is Between Days from Old Ramon tho

Good stuff upthread about Strawberry Hill. Hadn't listened to it in gawd knows how long. That chorus is spectacular.

Still, though -- Wop-a-Din-Din.

most recent obsession is Between Days from Old Ramon tho

aw man this song is super great

love the guitar tone throughout old ramon and then also on ghosts

"Take Me Out"

;_;

in response to a comment made a few posts upthread, i find Funhouse to be an astonishing commentary on nostalgia. soberingly despondent and engulfed in alien emotion, yet wholly atmospheric and grounded in memory -- a tribute to arbitrary snapshots of life and their meaning.

these days, i would put Dragonflies forward as the best representation of the impact this band has on me.

just listened to Funhouse and to add to the remarks i made just now, it's one of the shortest 9-minute journeys that i can think of. i mean it's slow, but not slow for slowness' sake, more as a means of zoning in for extended lengths on fragments of activity and emotion suspended in another time and place, like a slideshow set on crawl.

by "shortest", i mean it has me under its spell and i never pay attention to the playing time.

I meant musically, and was referring to many of the dissonant chord movements that appear during some bridges and elsewhere, like the heaviness of the song is making it hard for the notes to hit their marks. It would sound sloppy to someone without knowing Mark's ability as a guitar player. The love/hate comes from my enjoyment of it by myself but the awkwardness of making someone else sit through it with me, understanding how it sounds like it's trudging it's way through the nine minutes if you aren't paying close attention to it's intended mood. The point where the song begins to unravel is where the distortion comes in, or when the la's happen soon afterwards, and for a song with an already slow pace this part feels like walking through mud. Again, I love it normally but if you throw someone unfamiliar in the room with me, I am immediately sensitive to what makes it a chore to listen to.

I also agree upthread about Have You Forgotten, this is the song that I discovered them with. It's one of those songs where I wish I knew how to arrange strings so I could transpose this for an orchestra to add heartbreaking swells behind him as he plays.

Evan, to the uninitiated i'm sure Funhouse would be a very trying slog and a lot of hard work. it's kind of funny really -- i get a lot of emotional resonance from it, but never feel confronted or destabilised as i'm sure a lot of listeners do. i guess that that in itself is a testament to the impact of the song, that it turns people off or makes them feel uncomfortable to the extent that their mood or outlook is affected. i think it's interesting what you say about the end of the song and its means of rendering an already a-musical and unconventional soundscape even more jarring and bare. in many ways it's a retread of the structure of Katy Song, albeit with less humanity and warmth. i think Funhouse has some of the qualities that are representative of Rollercoaster as whole -- it's long, indulgent, sprawling and intermittently sloppy, but there's still the sense that every last inch of it needs to be there, laid bare just as it is. i can't imagine any of it missing.

More great originals from me

Katy Song
New Jersey (either version depending on mood)
Have you forgotten
Grace Cathedra Park

Ok sorry - pressed too early- big zzzs

Katy Song