Definitive Albums: Red House Painters 'Down Colorful Hill' (1992)

Mark Kozelek thought his band were going nowhere. It was 1992, and the world was in love with grunge. Kozelek —a depressive, self-defeating type at the best of times— felt like a man out of time: in love with old records by Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, John Denver, and Yes. The era called for distorted power chords, aggression, and sarcasm; Kozelek finger-picked a guitar, played at a snail's pace, and couldn't have been more earnest if he tried.

Despite playing around San Francisco for years, Kozelek's band, Red House Painters had no local following. Their girlfriends didn't even want to come to gigs; they preferred Jane's Addiction and Nirvana. The band were a glorified hobby; members tending to day-jobs, Kozelek considering calling it quits.

Then, fate intervened. Mark Eitzel —a songsmith who shared not just Kozelek's christian name, but his same range— had, across five albums for his band American Music Club, managed to find a cult following in England despite general disinterest locally. Knowing such, Eitzel dubbed Kozelek's demo tape off for English journalists, and one eventually was passed on to Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of 4AD Records.

4AD were, at the time, the most influential indie in the UK; home to beloved American outfits Throwing Muses, The Breeders, and The Pixies. Musical comparisons between The Pixies and Red House Painters are rare, but like those alt-rock kings, Kozelek found his demos delivered to the world, via 4AD, essentially 'as is' for his debut. Watts-Russell knew that, if he'd fallen in love with a demo tape, so would the world.

Down Colorfull Hill, the debut Red House Painters record, was, of course, duly acclaimed. But the immediate accolades it earnt on release in England weren't the legacy of the LP. Kozelek's influence proved as slow-burning as the band's music; a cult following and a succession of slow, sad, sombre songsmiths trailing out, over the years, behind this LP.

The album begins with Kozelek's guitar gently fading in, rising from the silence. Then his voice —mumbled, mournful, weirdly powerful— cuts in with a lyric that, initially, seems like it might be funny: "so it's not loaded stadiums or ballparks." Listen further, and the spare, stark lyrics of the song prove to be about growing old; "24," its title, referring not to hours in the day, but Kozelek's age. "Oldness comes to rile," Kozelek sings, on close, "the youth who dream suicide"; time standing still for no man, no matter how self-destructive.

That sense of time passing, and the nostalgia that comes with, colors so much of Down Colorful Hill. The LP's immense, 11-minute title track, finds Kozelek wailing: "prayers/always die in time." Its closer, "Michael," is a lament for a former childhood friend, lost to delinquency; Kozelek stepping into straight-out remembrance ("Do you remember our first subway ride? Our first heavy metal haircuts?") of things past.

Across the LP, Kozelek's words amount to a self-portrait: there's depression, pills, long-distance love, a fascination with Japan (both literal and as symbolic 'other'), and the sense of a life slipping away, out of his fingers. It's, in many ways, a record about the sad realisation that your youth's gone to waste, and come to an end; about the death of young dreams.

Would Kozelek still have felt the same way if he knew that an English record deal, a cult following, a long and prosperous career (from Red House Painters to Sun Kil Moon), and a side-line in cameo appearances in Hollywood movies (see: Almost Famous and Shopgirl) were coming his way? Perhaps so; it's not as if all that stemmed from these demos made him anything other than mopey, hangdog, and glass-half-empty.

As it stands, Down Colorful Hill perfectly captures a person at the crossroads: personally, emotionally, musically, career-wise; a no-longer-so-young songsmith weighing up nascent adulthood. And, the LP also stands as the perfect introduction to Red House Painters: six spartan songs, untouched by any ideas that anyone, anywhere, would ever care about Kozelek's concerns.

Record Label: 4AD
Release Date: September 14, 1992