Red House Painters’ Ocean Beach (released 3/27/25) distills this group’s idiosyncrasies. Arbitrarily categorized as part of the ‘slowcore’ genre within the indie rock universe, titular leader Mark Kozelek and company’s style belies that glib description (and its attendant droning).
The lilting, sing-song instrumental that opens this 4AD release thus stands as a statement of purpose. And while the acoustic textures that dominate “Cabrezon” are less prominent on “Summer Dress” too, the latter track features organ and spare strings; the multiple instrumental tones accentuate the contrast(s) with an emotionally detached performance the likes of which dominates this fourth RHP long-player.
That said, “San Geronimo” is decidedly more uptempo, its pace set with insistent but restrained electric guitars. Some falsetto harmonies on this cut also offset the often monotone, half-spoken vocal delivery of the Painters’ chief songwriter Mark Kozelek.
Over the course of this fifty-four plus minutes devoted to nine originals by the aforementioned titular leader of RHP (who also produced the album), the lyrics sound like a series of inner conversations. Accordingly, the omission of printed words in the graphic design of this package(as with all the RHP CDs) encourages absorption in the trance-like effect of listening.
And that’s well to the good as Mark Kozelek himself often sounds lost in thought as he relates his impressions of the world around him. To the great credit of guitarist Gorden Mack, bassist Jerry Vessel, and drummer Anthony Koutsos, the three never intrude upon the frontman but instead remain judicious in their accompaniment.
Notwithstanding the author’s stream-of-consciousness approach, complemented by the subdued, repetitive arrangements, Ocean Beach is the most literal-minded and accessible record this band has ever made. For instance, the piano-dominated “Shadows” might well be classified as singer-songwriter fodder: the forthright instrumental backdrop emphasizes the emotional weight of the lyrics on a composition so conventional it includes a regularly repeated refrain.
This last Red House Painters’ LP to feature guitarist Gordon Mack eventually led to the dissolution of the foursome in the wake of Mark Kozelek’s solo work, then the gestation of his next band, Sun Kil Moon. And Ocean Beach foreshadows that fitful progression: “Over My Head” and “Red Carpet” are rife with spontaneity before the band returns to the contemplative likes of “Brockwell Park;” Part two of the latter is all intertwining electric and acoustic rhythm guitars, its unlisted inclusion extending the apparent end of the record.
More than a little subsequent tumult led to the delay of the final RHP in 2001 Old Ramon. But preceding this sequence of events by five years was Songs for a Blue Guitar; with seventy-plus minutes of playing time like its predecessor, it is effectively a double album, proof positive of the prolific nature of this enigmatic group.
The dissonance at the end of “Moments” might well be a metaphor for the later periods of Red House Painters’ history. Whether or not that’s the case, it does set the stage for the implicit conflict of passion(s) in the penultimate conclusion of Ocean Beach’s “Drop:” The layers of feeling as described distinctly reflect the piano and soft guitar chording.
More significantly, the entrancing quality of the material and the musicianship are all the more striking in such an ostensible recapitulation. The double-disc Retrospective of 1999 likewise reaffirms how consistent this band’s approach was over the course of its decade-long history.
Accordingly, the perspective of three decades posits Ocean Beach ever so much more clearly as a microcosm of Red House Painters’ strangely provocative body of work.
