Old Ramonformat: digital
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,64]
producer: Mark Kozelek
label: Sub Pop Records - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 2. "Byrd Joel" - 3. "Void" - 4. "Between Days" (4 / 5) - 5. "Cruiser" (4 / 5) - 6. "Michigan" - 7. "River" - 8. "Smokey" - 10. "Kavita"
6th and final studio album by Red House Painters follows almost five full years after Songs for a Blue Guitar (Jul 1996). Since that, the band has gone through a fase where Mark Kozelek was only performing member to this new line-up after guitarist Gordon Mack had already left the band in 1995, and the album is actually released after Kozelek had already issued his first solo ep Rock 'n' Roll Singer (Jun. 2000) and his first full-length solo album What's Next to the Moon (Jan. 2001) but Red House Painters is not yet a burried project. On Old Ramon, the band consists of founding member, songwriter, vocalist and guitarist Mark Kozelek, new guitarist Phil Carney (former guitarist of Indian Bingo), and a return to the band's rhythm section made up by bassist Jerry Vessel and drummer Anthony Koutsos.
The releative long timespan in between albums is not only a matter of reconstructing the band anew as this had actually been recorded three years earlier, however, due to a merging of labels, the band essentially found itself without a legal record contract, and it wasn't until Mark Kozelek succeeded in purchasing the recordings of the album that he managed to finally release it on the American label, Sub Pop. All tracks are credited Kozelek and they're typical of his style a combination of alt. folk, indie rock, and singer / songwriter with bonds to American folk traditions.
Some tracks and parts of the overall sound tend to point to what was to become one of Kozelek's most praised albums - also my personal favourite by Kozelek - the Sun Kil Moon debut Ghosts of the Great Highway (Nov. 2003). As a Red House Painter's album this appears as quite light-hearted and electrified.
Red House Painters dissolved at some point following the album release, and then Kozelek more or less morphed the remains into a new band with primarily Kozelek but also with Vessel and Koutsos taking part in the formation of Sun Kil Moon - later Carney would also be included before it would turn into a Kozelek solo-project.
Recommended.
[ allmusic.com, NME 4 / 5 stars ]
