Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Glenn Tipton
2. Carry Me Ohio
3. Salvador Sanchez
4. Last Tide
5. Floating
6. Gentle Moon
7. Lily And Parrots
8. Duk Koo Kim
9. Si Paloma
10. Pancho Villa

Disc 2:

1. Somewhere
2. Carry Me Ohio (2)
3. Salvador Sanchez (2)
4. Arrival
5. Somewhere (2)
6. Gentle Moon (2)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37087 in Music
• Released on: 2007-02-26
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

CD Description
After 2001's OLD RAMON (which had actually been recorded years earlier), singer/songwriter Mark Kozelek retired the RedHouse Painters name, and his next non-solo outing, 2003's GHOST OF THE GREAT HIGHWAY, was credited to Sun Kil Moon. (Maybe he got tired of being filed next to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in record stores?) While in many ways the album is a continuation of the sound on the Painters' SONGS FOR A BLUE GUITAR, here Kozelek streamlines the material, refraining from extended six-string freak-outs and painfully confessional lyrics, in favor of sharply honed rock-inflected tunes and gorgeous, string-laden tracks. The result is one of the most directly affecting and immediately appealing records of Kozelek's career, and those intrigued by, but wary of, the Red House Painters will likely be pleasantly surprised with Sun Kil Moon's GHOSTS OF THE GREAT HIGHWAY.

Customer Reviews

You've got to have optimism. "An old fight film"
Ghosts of the Great Highway is a great, great record. It'll not make any of the best-of-the-decade lists, much like Spirit didn't in the mid-70s.

As John Denver once said: "Once I was just two feet high, today I'm six feet tall/ but knowing who to listen to, is something else again".

This LP sounded to me a bit half-finished on initial release. Not in terms of the selection of tracks or the production, more the running time: it's short compared to the RHP releases. Then you check the lyrics and there's a dimensional expansiveness that transcends running time.

This version with the extra tracks is the version to buy. 'Carry Me Ohio (alt version)' and 'Somewhere' (Sondheim cover) really add to the vibe.

"But if love is like stone, yours was mine. Through to my bones" (Gentle Moon)

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This is the best thing that Mark Kozelek has done to date. 'Glenn Tipton' seems like an innocent enough Neil Young-esque outing, until you realise he's seeing things through the eyes of a serial killer lamenting the fates of his victims (or just wallowing in self pity.) The track also wryly refers to Kozelek's teenage love of metal bands like Judas Priest. Kozelek's never shy about referencing music considered 'uncool' by many (The Cars, John Denver, Wings & Kiss for example.) There's some contemporary myth making going down in the two songs about dead boxers ('Salvador Sanchez' & 'Duk Koo Kim'); the former a robust rockout, reprised in a more elegiac acoustic form at the album's close; the latter a fluid, trippy epic which perhaps betrays Kozelek's love of Yes in harmonies & vocals redolent of Jon Anderson, and soporofic mandolin strumming. Additional textures of romanticism are added to the overriding vibe of melancholy with the addition of strings & Latin style guitars, possibly influenced by Kozelek's trevels in Mexico. Without a doubt one of the best (and overlooked) releases of the noughties, the two Sun Kil Moon albums which followed didn't quite cover the same broad palette as this baby.