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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Feed Your Head, June 29, 2001
Mark Kozelek's debut solo LP is a superb rendering of 10 lesser-known (to these sensitive ears at least) Bon Scott-era AC/DC songs. Kozelek extracts every last drop of the macho hard-rock-isms that originally infected these tracks and transforms them with his acoustic guitar into gentile, Sunday-morning folk songs of the highest order. The standouts "Up to My Neck in You" and "Bad Boy Boogie" rank with his best work. This is not pastiche, Kozelek clearly loves this material and treats it with respect and grace. To avid Red House Painters pundits this is hardly new ground that he is breaking. Kozelek has on previous records tackled other MOR/Hard Rock figureheads such as Kiss, Yes, The Cars, Paul Simon and Paul McCartney. It's just that here he does it for an entire album and he does it better. His interpretative skills are so accomplished that even an entire album of Backstreet Boys' covers would probably turn out OK! Or am I going to far?
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
For those about to rock?, May 11, 2001
Whichever way you look at it this is a surprisingly good CD. Mark Kozelek, normally "not very happy" at the front of the Red House Painters, has made a whole CD covering the songs of metal pranksters AC/DC and, without question, it's a success on several levels. If your youth was like mine then you may well have seen AC/DC live, or even owned a record or two, then at least some of this CD will seem familiar, but not in a way you could ever have anticipated. The performance is stripped down to the bare bones of acoustic guitar and voice. In style terms, we are in the territory of pre Oscars Elliot Smith. It's a strange thing that the difference in style gives the songs a totally different emotional feel and appeal from the originals. Meanings of lyrics are transformed from AC/DC's typical crass adolescent chauvinism to heartfelt yearning and an air of lonely desperation, the word "Feel" in "Love at First Feel" for example is transformed from meaning a manhandling to a pull on the heartstrings. None of this however should be taken as a criticism of Angus Young and crew, the songs were obviously very well structured in the first place, (I remember from those gigs that the band could play) such that they can be broken down from bluesy metal rifferama to what could even be loosely be described as folk, and still work remarkably well. Although you would have to say Mark Kozelek's arrangements also deserve praise here. My particular favourites are "Love Hungry Man" which has a longing in Mark's voice that is poignant in the extreme, and "Walk All Over You" which has an air of revenge and hurt about it. So whether you know the originals or not does not really matter, it's a hugely enjoyable collection either way, if rather short at only 30 minutes.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'm giving it five stars, yep., August 13, 2003
By A Customer
I bought this cd because i like the red house painters... and i came into the knowledge that these were ac/dc covers later, after looking at the songwriting credits. admittedly, i had never given bon scott-era ad/dc much of a chance... and the lyrics here take on a completely new feeling as delivered by mark kozelek. in fact, they are melancholy, somber, and often moving.
i now listen to early ac/dc (the 2003 epic remasters in digipak are exceptional) and strangely enough my listening experience with those albums has been somewhat informed by this album of covers.
you could say i came into things a little backwards, but for me that's what makes this album brilliant... i've played this album for a few people who aren't the least bit familiar with early ac/dc and they loved it...
so don't give me this crap about artistic wankery. its genius when someone can reinterpret and recontextualize songs to such a degree that they take on completely new meanings and moods.
so kudos to kozelek. give this a listen. its beautiful.
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