The music of Mark Kozelek and his band Red House Painters loomed heavily over my later college years. The emotional lyrical content of the songs was a perfect sanctuary for a very young man torn constantly between sensitivity and brashness. Appearing a mere 8 months after the group's first record—Down Colorful Hill, a collection of demos deemed by 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell to be a finished product after some remixing—the eponymous 1993 album Red House Painters (now often known as Rollercoaster) was a monolith. A double LP, it was my #1 album of that year and at decade's end I ranked it as #2 of the 1990s. It's been nearly 15 years since I played it; it's practically singular in my collection as an album that is just too psychologically demanding for me to play any longer. One day I'll revisit it. I've chosen a song here that tilts toward the side of brashness; it also appears on the album in a slow piano version. Here's the full band take.
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