Red House Painters
Old Ramon (Sub Pop)
Mark Kozelek feels your pain. Not only does he feel it, he reaches right up beneath its skirt and gives it a good groping. Not content to stew in his own juices, Kozelek and bandmates Anthony Koudos and Gordon Mack have returned in a hellishly roundabout way. Why is Ramon so old, you ask? Because he was recorded nearly four years back and consigned to the limbo dustbin thanks to the Polygram/Universal merger that left both the LP and the Painters themselves in the zone of twilight. Kozelek managed to fill the interim with a cover of AC/DC songs, a John Denver tribute, and a recent SXSW slot, while the other guys presumably listened to some shiny happy music to get their souls back on track. Or not. Old Ramon‘s mix of ought-to-be-patented plaintive whispers and sleepy acoustic musings is pure Kozelek straight on through, with opener “Wop-a-Din-Din” setting the tone with its spare lullaby framework. It’s only when the song finally creeps to a close that you suddenly realize you’ve just listened to a guy singing sweet nothings to his housecat. Rock & roll has all the pussy it can handle, but this is so much more it’s alarming. Like previous RHP releases, Kozelek & Co. mine the groove between the grooves; Old Ramon doesn’t rock in any conventional way, but it remains a poignantly work nonetheless. Inundated by slo-core bands as we are these days, it’s heartening to hear this almost-lost gem from some forerunners of the genre. 
This article appears in June 8 • 2001.