Quick history lesson: "Old Ramon" was RHP-proper's first album for Island Records offshoot Supreme ("Songs for a Blue Guitar" was recorded by Kozelek with a pick-up band and was to have been credited as a solo album until the last minute). But, just prior to release, Island was purchased by Seagrams' Liquor Conglomerate, and Supreme dissolved into their tumbler with a dozen other labels, and the album and the Painters lingered in contractual limbo for years.

Delayed and unreleased albums always gather a mythos that inflates their reputations beyond that which they deserve. So, just to get it out of the way: "Old Ramon" is not Prince's "Black Album." It's not the de-Spectorized "Let it Be" sessions. It's not even Red House Painters' best album (it would take a lot to beat "Rollercoaster" and "Ocean Beach"). But, it very well could have been their breakthrough album in 1997.

This is the Painters' poppiest and most musically diverse release. Sound-wise, this is a punchier sounding record than the previous albums. Departing guitarist Gordon Mack is replaced by Indian Bingo guitarist Phil Carney whose guitar at times closely approximates Steve Hackett's sound (no, I'm not kidding, and no, I don't think that's a bad thing), notably on the sweeping "Void". "Between Days" is a straightfoward stomper that makes some sense in relation to Kozelek's recent AC/DC fetish. "Michigan" is elevated by slippery pedal steel frippery. "Byrd Joel" bounds along a fuzz bass with sing-song chorus. "Kavita," the album's closer, is a loping, not-entirely serious folky ode to a girl from a guy, oblivious to the assholic things he's saying to her (see the quote at the top of this review). It's probably the sweetest moment on the album.

The three strongest tracks, as may be expected, are the ones that don't deviate too far from the traditional Painters' formula of six-to-seven minute epics of slow, ethereal guitar songs that build to a loud climax. "Void", a calmed down re-interpretation of "Make Like Paper," builds on a chorus chant about traffic lights that effectively reconstructs a long night drive after that one romantic encounter upon which you rest the weight of your future and your hopes and trust in the world. "Smokey" just as effectively details the very moment you realise your loss when such a relationship falls apart: "I can't pretend there's a beginning without an end/it ain't contrived/all the magic in our lives/comes down like a storm/then drizzles/then dies." It scans maudlin, but it sounds resigned to hopefullness in the face of futility. "River" is a dense soup; Kozelek has a manner of turning an awkward lyric into something profoundly terrifying (eg "Medicine Bottle"'s: "and like a medicine bottle/in my hands I will hold you/and swallow you slowly/so as to last me a lifetime"), and "River"'s at first seemingly innocuous picnic scene takes an dire turn into the psychosexual replete with a perhaps-mystically-endowed Siren-figure, masks, and abandonment fears, all layed out atop a squirrly mess of low-volume guitar feedback that sounds like animals on fire.

The only true misstep of the album might be Kozelek's willingness to lay out so transparently a somewhat cavalier and adolescent attitude toward women. "Cruiser" covers some lyrical ground that made me cringe in its obvious crudeness. To the uninformed listener, "Wop-A-Din" might sound like a sweet song with some tossed off lines about spousal abuse, although the song is actually about Kozelek's cat. (A note on this song: the version included on the release of the album is a slower acoustic version. A much faster electric version was recorded and released as a limited edition 7" last year and is so superior that I can't figure out why this version wasn't put on the album, except for the fact that the electric version bears more than a passing similarity musically to Yo La Tengo's "Cherry Chapstick", which, of course, was written and recorded years after "Wop-A-Din." Makes one wonder if Ira Kaplan had a smuggled copy of "Old Ramon" kicking around a year or two ago. Here's hoping the electric version creeps onto a CD single or something).

2000, of course, was the year of the Koz. He popped up almost everywhere, from Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous", to being the subject of a Mojave 3 song, to having "All Mixed Up" on the Gap's Christmas ad campaign, to tossing off two albums of AC/DC covers and odds and ends. It's nice to have "Old Ramon" finally coming to stores, even if the best thing about it is the promise that Red House Painters are once more a viable band, and will be performing and recording (and hopefully releasing) again soon.

Labels: red house painters, reviews