Don't Call It a Comeback

"This record -- everything that's going on with it -- just feels really good to me," he says. "And to finish it in the summer and have it come out in the winter -- it makes sense. It's like the first time. With Songs for a Blue Guitar[the Painters' fifth album] there were problems; it came out way later. Old Ramon [their sixth]: There were problems."

What he's talking about is the Red House Painters' constant struggle, during the late '90s, to get their records released. All speculation about the band's interpersonal conflicts and Kozelek's go-it-alone attitude aside (because there's simply too much to add up, and besides, a former Painter, drummer Anthony Koutsos, joins Kozelek on Ghosts, so it can't be all piss and vinegar), what's clear is that sometime around 1995, after four albums for 4AD -- whose CEO, Ivo Watts-Russell, signed the band in '92 after hearing the Colorful Hill demos -- things were not going smoothly for the group.

Amanda Marsalis

Details

Look for a fully outfitted Sun Kil Moon appearance later this spring. In the meantime, Mark Kozelek performs his first solo show in San Francisco in almost two years on Thursday, Jan. 22

Mia Doi Todd opens at 9 p.m.

Tickets are $15

885-0750

www. musichallsf.com

Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell (at Polk), S.F.

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More About

• Mark Kozelek
• Red House Painters
• AC/DC (Musical Group)
• Colorful Hill
• Glenn Tipton

Written, recorded, and performed almost entirely by Kozelek, Songs for a Blue Guitar, released in 1996, confirmed the hearsay that band and label were no longer hitting it off. To let the rumors tell it, Watts-Russell took issue with an (admittedly self-indulgent) guitar solo in the middle of track three, "Make Like Paper," which pushed it past the 12-minute mark. The extra-long song wasn't unprecedented -- Down Colorful Hill's title track ran nearly 11 minutes, and every RHP album had one, as does Ghosts -- but the dispute over this particular opus resulted in the Painters' splitting from 4AD. The group found a home for Blue Guitar at Supreme Recordings -- a subsidiary of Island Records, itself a subsidiary of Polygram (don't ya just love major labels?) -- which finally put out the record in the summer of '96.

But that delay was nothing compared to the problems with Old Ramon, Blue Guitar's follow-up, which didn't hit shelves till the spring of 2001, despite its completion in early '98. That debacle was the result of Universal's acquisition of Polygram and the subsequent reorganization. Kozelek ultimately had to buy back the rights to his songs so that Sub Pop could release them.

By that point, what was left of the Painters' momentum was gone. Throughout it all, Kozelek was working on and releasing new material -- his album of AC/DC covers (What's Next to the Moon), for example, as well as contributions to various tributes and compilations. He even snagged a role as the bass player for the fictional band Stillwater in Cameron Crowe's movie Almost Famous. (My favorite line of his: "Hey, Russell, check it out: high school cheerleaders. Pull over!") But while that work might have paid the bills and kept him busy, it was starting to seem like the floundering of an artist who didn't know what to do next.

When I ask Kozelek if this new record could be considered his comeback, at first he says no. But then he thinks about it.

"There was such a buildup to [Old Ramon]," he says, "that by the time people got it they were like, 'Well, that was OK.' It didn't get a big response. Then, with the AC/DC record, it was just me playing solo acoustic, doing cover songs. ... I haven't done an interview with SF Weeklysince 1999, back when I had this little part in Almost Famousand they interviewed me about that, and in fact they ripped apart the AC/DC solo record, too." (Unjustly, in my opinion; it's amazing to hear Kozelek render that band's dirty swagger as plaintive ballads.) "So all of the sudden," he continues, "people are asking me questions again, when they haven't for five years. So there is a feeling of come- back or a feeling that something new is happening."

But Kozelek is being modest: Ghosts of the Great Highway is currently No. 2 on CMJ's College Radio chart, and has been for almost a month. It has also received rave reviews in magazines around the world -- the vaunted hipster bible Pitchfork.com called it "the triumphant sound of an industry underdog finally making good on his past potential." What makes Ghosts such an achievement is that, for the first time in a long, long while -- arguably since the Red House Painters' pair of self-titled LPs from 1993 -- Kozelek is not only doing what he does best, i.e., playing sincere, earthy folk-rock, but also doing it better than he's ever done it before, pushing it further, taking it in new directions.

Where Painters albums like Blue Guitar and Ocean Beach tended to ramble, Ghosts is focused, its songs sequenced carefully and artfully. Enticed by the meditative, solo-acoustic opener "Glenn Tipton," you follow Kozelek through the crunchy rock of "Salvador Sanchez"; the 14-minute opus "Duk Koo Kim"; and the whimsical, Van Morrison-esque instrumental "Si Paloma"; arriving finally at a gentler, send-you-on-your-way version of "Salvador Sanchez," retitled "Pancho Villa."

A master arranger (the AC/DC makeovers were an exercise in perfecting that art), Kozelek shades his ruminations eloquently, adding a touch of xylophone here ("Carry Me Ohio"), a mandolin riff there ("Glenn Tipton"), and even warm, evocative swatches of strings ("Last Tide," "Gentle Moon"). These hues are used sparingly, though, with most of the album based around acoustic guitars, brushed drums, and Kozelek's vocals, which have reached their zenith, having evolved from the desperate, almost Robert Smith-like cries of Colorful Hill to the rich, leathery tenor we find here.