Red House Painters - Early Demos

As the title might suggest, this is a collection of early cassette demos and unreleased songs recorded during the band's early days. Most of the material on these tapes later appears on Down Colorful Hill, Red House Painters I, and Red House Painters II, but here they're all in less developed stages. It's interesting to hear some of the familiar polished material in a more stripped-down, lo-fi setting. The unreleased tracks are really great, too. Guess they just didn't make the cut before the band started moving into more folky territory.

dlow

Red House Painters II (Bridge)

Perhaps even bleaker than Red House Painters I, II has slowly grown to become one of my favorite releases of Mark Kozelek's vast and growing catalog. To those familiar with its predecessor, take that album and push it to even more austere extremes and you'll have something like this. This album even sounds kind of Slint-ish at times. "Evil" is frankly one of the most aptly titled songs and "Blindfold" might just be the best song Kozelek did under the RHP moniker. I mean, he just straight up screams for the last two minutes of the song. User PMac551 of RYM put it best when he said "Blindfold is the pinnacle of feeling like absolute shit and it is everything all at once and I don't even know how to respond to that song." Also, this is the most panned RHP album on sputnikmusic's review site, so you know it's gotta rule.

sad

Souled American - Notes Campfire

This band should be way bigger than they are. Been jammin Frozen for a while now so I decided to finally listen to Souled American's other jamz and Notes Campfire is probably better than Frozen which is saying a lot. More slow, dirge-like tunes for you to get sad to.

a chance before a choice

Souled American - Frozen

Time to pull a really vague and probably inaccurate comparison out of my asshole. Imagine the slowest Red House Painters song slowed down even more by tenfold, then stripped of everything except a few guitar tracks and vocals, creating a barren, lonely soundscape perfect for a long midnight drive on the plains.

freezd