2 keepers
keeper avg .181
The fifth Red House Painters album came at a time of label difficulties and is generally considered to be Mark Kozelek's first solo album. The transitional time seems to be have been a difficult time creatively, as most of the tracks are either overtly derivative, fatally flawed, or forgettable. The opening couple of "Have You Forgotten" and title song "Song for a Blue Guitar" are both pretty, though both bear too close resemblance to other alternative rock songs for my comfort, the former "Hardly Getting Over It" (Husker Du), the latter "Fade Into You" (Mazzy Star). In closing track "Another Song for a Blue Guitar" Kozelek doesn't even hide his inspiration, making the winking admission "and I ripped off the chords from Bron-yr-Aur" before doing just that.
The album's biggest statement is undoubtedly the 12-minute "Make Like Paper"****, providing the right balance of riffs, melody, and interesting detours, despite a few excess minutes of guitar-abuse. Except for the mid-tempo country-ish "I Feel the Rain Fall", nearly the whole is album is deliberately slow. And several of the originals don't stand out much one way or the other; the howling feedback that ushers out the solo acoustic "Trailways" is haunting but hardly noteworthy.
Which brings us to the album's three covers. Kozelek's version of Yes's "Long Distance Runaround" is an interesting re-interpretation with an amateur-hour wank-fest coda. He juxtaposes the lyrics to Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs" with (everything else from) Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer," including several more minutes of guitar fiddling to make the song to over 11-minutes. I give Uncle Neil a pass on song length as he actually has the chops to combine melody and noise into a kind of sonic journey (and as the originator of a whole music genre); Kozelek doesn't. While I can appreciate the novelty of remaking these well-known hits into studies in slow-core they're missed opportunities. He finds the right balance on the more-focused "All Mixed Up"****; he replaces the Cars's cool new wave groove with the trippy rhythmic approach of (the electric version of) his own song "New Jersey" (1993), and gives the song's bridge a stately grace.
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