'rollercoaster'

The Red House Painters transformed emotional upheaval into the melancholy catharsis of this sweeping sprawling slowcore sideshow. The album saw the group expanding on the demos that became their first album 'Down Colorful Hill' with songwriter and producer Mark Kozelek with guitarist Gordon Mack, bassist Jerry Vessel, and drummer Anthony Koutsos.  The eponymous album is known as 'Rollercoaster' because of the cover photo of the Thunderbolt on Coney Island.   

Kozelek confesses:   "'Rollercoaster' was the worst – the most stressful mess I ever got myself into ... That was just a time that I'll never forget, because I literally went from working front desk at the Chelsea Motor Inn to a week later, a record company in England wiring money to my bank account, saying 'Make an album.' I felt a lot of pressure. I didn't want to do things in sort of a tossed-off demo style like we'd done the other stuff. We finally had money. I wanted to experiment and do overdubs. We were just really going all-out ... I know the 'Rollercoaster' album is many people's favorite. But for me, it is and will always be the most difficult to get through. I hadn't heard it in years, and though there are some beautiful things I had forgotten about -- a delicate piano in 'Things Mean a Lot', the way the band brings life to 'Brown Eyes' midway through, and the chorus of 'Strawberry Hill', which was sung by a group of strangers we gathered from outside the Divisadero Street studio where we were recording -- what I remembered most, even when I look at the album's cover, is nine months of worry ... That 'Rollercoaster' album cover was very prophetic in its own way. My career has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows ... The ‘Rollercoaster’ record sort of has the same look as Zeppelin's 'Physical Graffiti' and it's also epic length. The stuff you loved as a kid is going to come through. It'll show on your album covers, in the length of your songs, the way you use melodies." 




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'Rollercoaster'
full album:

http://vimeo.com/57269126 



1.     "Grace Cathedral Park"     00:00   
2.     "Down Through"             03:50 
3.     "Katy Song"                06:27 
4.     "Mistress"                 14:50 
5.     "Things Mean a Lot"        18:49     
6.     "Funhouse"                 22:08  
7.     "Take Me Out"              31:19  
8.     "Rollercoaster"            36:02  
9.     "New Jersey"               40:16  
10.     "Dragonflies"             44:20   
11.     "Mistress" (Piano Version)48:00           
12.     "Mother"                  52:33    
13.     "Strawberry Hill"         65:39    
14.     "Brown Eyes"              73:14