Mark Kozelek

Review by Jake Thomas

Man, what a voice, that's pretty much all could think about the entire time Mark Kozolek played. There was quite a bit of down time and maybe a little too much banter, but every time he'd start playing a new song it made everything all better. Since I never got to see the Red House Painters, this was close as I was going to get. He played a number of RHP songs as you might imagine, including a number that Id really wanted to hear (Im terrible with song titles though so please dont ask me to tell you what they actually were...but the crowd went nuts every time he played one of these so you can assume they are some of the more well known RHP songs). Not that I was surprised, but it seems like a large chunk of his crowd are those types that like to constantly shout out comments and song requests at the man over and over and over; more often than not, singer-songwriter types don't react too well to this type of behavior, but Kozolek took it pretty well in stride and made lots of jokes about it. At one point he played that song that was featured in a Gap ad - the crowd started going nuts, and he stopped about 20 seconds in and says oh sure, you go nuts for the song from the fucking Gap ad or something to that effectit was pretty funny actually. One small complaint I might have is that he took some of his classic songs and changed them around different pacing and delivery and all that and while it sounded great, it wasnt exactly what I wanted either. But he kept things pretty even by delivering others in the expected method, much to my delight. A good time all in all, and Ill be looking forward to that Sun Kil Moon show that I hear is coming up soon so I can see him working with a full band.

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Read our previous Red House Painters review:
July 2, 2001 @ Great American Music Hall

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