User Pick of the Day (#46): Red House Painters (MeccaLecca)

[BrandonMiaow]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Red House Painters by Red House Painters
Chart: Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by MeccaLecca
Rank on User's Chart: 5
Year: 1993
Rank on BEA Overall: 732
Average Rating: 83/100
Chart Note: "This is my perfect autumn soundtrack. Mark Kozelek's finest work embodies the nature of melancholy

Favorite songs: Mistress, New Jersey, Katy Song"

[BrandonMiaow]

I generally think this album is overrated as a whole, and I find a lot of the songs fall flat for me, but Katy Song and New Jersey are really really amazing.

[Goodsir]

Quite simply one of the best albums ever made.

[drakonium]

From what I've read, one of the best albums I've never listened to.

[RepoMan]

One of my all time faves. Way ahead of its time with its use of ambient metal to shade a bunch of tracks. Can we call this bleak metal? And the the pacing of the vocals is just perfect. Like Heinz ketchup.

[HazeyTwilight]

[Mercury]

Honestly never heard this RHP album. I really need to. I don't have spotify or indulge in illegal downloads nor do I even have a working computer. So my main outlet to listen to albums is shitty YouTube uploads which I give up on within literally 10 minutes because they already sound bad but sound atrocious and stop and start constantly on my ancient iPhone 4. And also the library is a resource, and so is the record store. Sometimes I will just buy albums recommended without hearing them. Or I will go to the listening booth and listen to almost the entire thing.

Anyway, the point is this album I have not seen in any of those 3 places, so no listen yet.
_________________
-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!

[meccalecca]

Wow. I didn't even realize this was ranked low enough to qualify.

To those of you saying it's not on par with other RHP releases, I'll have to say that for a long long time Down Colorful Hill was my favorite record (thanks in part to the incredible title track). But over time, this one grew more and more perfect with each listen. There are very very few albums in this world that have left such a profound effect on me. Musically, it's not far removed from Dirty Three's folk post rock, but also complimented by Kozelek's incredible melancholy songwriting. Maybe it's just that Mistress is one of my favorite songs ever, and it appears twice on the album, or maybe it's that Kozelek utilizes his love for big 70s guitar rock on a slow depressing track like Funhouse, but I think this album is perfect.
_________________
http://jonnyleather.com

[Silver]

It's my favorite album of all time and probably will be for a long time. To me it's the quintessential Kozelek record, with him at his most emotional songwriting and the sound that best represents Red House Painters. It's in a perfect in between of the dreary slowcore of DCH and the warm folk rock of Ocean Beach, and manages to hit amazing peaks in both of those categories. Plus, it's length is actually a major plus for me, because it just means there's a larger quantity of perfect songs on the album. I honestly wouldn't mind if it was longer. Also, even though the obvious stand-outs are absolutely amazing (i.e. Grace Cathedral Park, Katy Song, Mistress), the rest of the album keeps the quality at the same consistenly amazing level. Down Through contains some of his most heartbreaking lyricism, Take Me Out demonstrates his ability to write a fantastic song in a largely folk context, New Jersey displays an absolute beauty in minimal songwriting, and Strawberry Hill is honestly one of the most emotionally impacting songs I've ever heard and up there with Medicine Bottle as far as crushing, slowcore tracks go. To me Rollercoaster is more consistent than either DCH or Ocean Beach, which is amazing for it's length. But, if I had multiple albums per artist on my chart all three of those albums would at least be in my top 15, possibly top ten, so really it's just Kozelek is the best songwriter of all time.