Out today is the brilliant new album from Sun Kil Moon. The album is full of the intense heartbreaking songs that we have come to expect from Mark Kozelek. I don't know how he does it, but he creates the most depressing songs imaginable and he keeps you coming back for more. I just can't get enough of his albums over the last 15 years or so. They sometimes almost hurt me when I listen to them. Like the emotions actually become painful. I can sometimes feel the tears just by hearing his name or thinking about his music for even a second. It is sort of Pavlovian. My body had been trained to get emotional just at the thought of Mark Kozelek of the Red House Painters. This might not sound like very much fun, but I completely enjoy listening to Sun Kil Moon albums and I can't barely imagine my life without Mr. Mark Kozelek making music. My journey through his music began a long time ago. I still remember going to Morning Glory Music in Santa Barbara to pick up my fist copy of a Red House Painters album. At this point in my life I was very much obsessed with 4AD Records. I was determined to own everything on the label and had not yet been disappointed. I also based some of my purchases on album covers at that point-- this is how I first got into another 4AD band, This Mortal Coil.

The two self titled Red House Painters albums came out in 1993, a year after Down Colorful Hill came out in 1992.  My first album by them that I bought was the "rollercoaster" cover self titled album. The cover was a brilliant sepia colored photo of an old broken down roller coaster. I absolutely love roller coasters and am a sucker for anything with a sepia filter on it. The album included "Grace Cathedral Park," "Mistress," and "Mother."  The entire album is fantastic, and I guarantee you that this album will make you cry. It is really all about that fantastic voice that belongs to Mark Kozelek. The slow, dreamy, folky music fits in perfectly with his voice. Many of the songs on the six Red House Painters albums remain some of my favorites. I became obsessed with Red House Painters after this first album. I went back on bought the other two albums and patiently waited until 1995 for the release of Ocean Beach. This became one of those albums forever attached to a year in my life. I can't really think about 1995/1996 without thinking about this album. It was my last year in college and this was the perfect album to sort of help soundtrack my life that year. There was lots of Blur, Elastica, Gene, Suede, and Stereolab to get my through the year as well, but Red House Painters have been in my life ever since.

Inevitably, sometimes life kicks us in the ass.

When it does, we all have things we turn to in order to cope.

This week, while spending most of my time at home either in bed with the covers over my head or on the couch, blankly staring at the wall, twiddling my thumbs, I felt an utter loss of inspirado.


I mean, after spending most of last week happily indulging in Bridezillas, where does one go from there? Where CAN one go from there when life shifts irritatingly and becomes a pathetic time of need?

Well, welcome to my schizo mind. As much as something as ridiculous as my aforementioned obsession with The View can cheer me up, I also turn to things that are much more nostalgic and "serious" and I do like to allow myself a good wallow every now and again when circumstances call for it.

The supreme wallowing record, at least for the last year or so, for me has been Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway. Have you heard it?


It's by Mark Kozelek, who formed Red House Painters, made a lot of records I never really got into, got sick of the business and that name and released this record as something completely different.

It's fantastic for a good wallow. In fact, I find it's actually fantastic any time. It's one of those fabulous and few records that morph somehow with my mood and mean different things whether I am ecstatic or down in the dumps or somewhere in between.