At first glance, Songs for a Blue Guitar appears much like previous Red House Painters albums, meandering and largely self-indulgent. Eight of the album's 11 songs stray over the five-minute mark (with two more than twice that length), and there are the covers of Yes's "Long Distance Runaround," Ric Ocasek's "All Mixed Up," and Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs." Kozelek may have strange taste when it comes to picking out covers ("Silly Love Songs"?), but on this album he's also showing a commitment and sense of deliberate purpose that I've not heard from him before. Even in the album's centerpiece, the more than 12-minute long "Make Like Paper" that contains a guitar solo that supposedly is responsible for 4AD dropping them, there's not a false move. The song unfolds gently, revealing more facets of itself than the spare instrumentation would seem to allow. The guitar's absolutely delicious Neil Young/Robert Quine/Richard Lloyd crunch doesn't hurt, either. That crunch shows up again in "Long Distance Runaround" and "Silly Love Songs," but the rest of the album is built around a gently arresting acoustic guitar that mirrors the soft-voiced Kozelek. --Randy Silver
Red House Painters
Songs for a Blue Guitar
[Supreme/Island]
Rating: 9.0
Songs For A Blue Guitar started out more a solo record than anything. Primary band member Kozelek went into the woods with some musicians he'd never worked with before and songs that had yet to be finished. While that may not sound like anything crazy to the average musician, to Kozelek it marks the end of an era.
All previous Red House Painters records were pre-written and practiced before the studio sessions. Everything was mixed by Kozelek, a self-proclaimed anal retentive perfectionist.
The new material is a little more loose. I don't want to compare it to the mellower side of Neil Young just because you're going to read that comparison in every single review of this record, but it's such an obvious influence that it can't be ignored.
Obviously, Red House Painters have always been rock for the Prozac set, but songs like "Make Like Paper" and "Priest Alley Song" show a different side of Kozelek the world has not yet seen: The Rocker. Some might be skeptical as to whether Mark's rockin' abilities are up to par after being so toned down all these years. You have nothing to worry about. This is some of his best work yet.
Red House Painters have done quite a few covers of all different styles over the years, from Simon and Garfunkel's somber "I Am A Rock" to Kiss' balls-out "Shock Me." Blue Guitar lets three new covers free. An ass-kicking version of Yes' "Long Distance Runaround," a beautiful, softer style "All Mixed Up" that reveals what incredible lyrics the song originally had when Ric Ocasek wrote them to perform with the Cars back in the '80s, and a completely insane, 11-minute cover of Paul McCartney and Wings' "Silly Love Songs."
When press kits say that a band has "evolved musically," I've found that it usually means they're beginning to suck. This is one of the few exceptions where that statement is actually true.
-Ryan Schreiber
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