Red House Painters: Songs for a Blue Guitar

Despite Mark Kozelek's tirelessly prolific nature—his band Red House Painters has made five albums in the past four years—he never makes the same album twice. While his restless unpredictability is admirable, it also makes it difficult to predict when he's going to release a great album (last year's Ocean Beach, the first self-titled 1994 album) or a tunelessly disappointing one (the second self-titled 1994 album). The new Songs for a Blue Guitar falls somewhere in the middle: Like its predecessors, it's slow and mopey—that's the closest you can come to predictably pigeonholing the Red House Painters sound—but it meanders among haunting guitar-pop ("Song for a Blue Guitar"); doleful campfire ballads (the oft-inane "Have You Forgotten"); rambling epics (the 12-minute "Make Like Paper," the 11-minute cover of "Silly Love Songs"); and even rock songs (the cover of Yes' "Long Distance Runaround"). It's one of RHP's spottier outings, but there are enough elegant moments (like the gorgeous "Trailways") to make it a hit with fans.