Ghosts of the Great Highway

Today's Music that is Pretty Great is Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway. This album is one that I got from eMusic some months ago, though it has escaped my blog until just now. It's the work of one Mark Kozelek, apologies for spelling, late of Red House Painters.

Ghosts has a dusty, rural American feel, and mostly features Kozelek's gentle voice and guitar. (I sometimes like to think that Kozelek's voice is Michael Stipe's after having been ironed and smoothed out. This may be wildly inaccurate, or at least dismissive of the inevitable Neil Young comparison.) Generally, the guitar is acoustic and bounding, but occasionally it is traded for a heavy, distorted electric. While the different guitars don't really come with a drastic change of mood or style, the changes in sound are a benefit to this album. Ghosts would stand well alone on its morose-folk merits, but the occasional grinding electric guitar gives it another dimension.

Kozelek is often mentioned as an underappreciated figure in music, and for good reason. Ghosts hardly seems exhaustive, and at the very least, compels me to seek some more Sun Kil Moon. Mostly, though, the title seems to be fitting - this album easily evokes images of dusky skies and open roads, semi trucks lagging up hills, weary gas-station attendants.

Ghosts isn't as fun or as easy to listen to as some of the brighter, poppier albums that I am fond of, but it's definitely worth the trouble. Give "Carry Me Ohio" and "Salvador Sanchez" a try - these are two completely different songs, but they are fairly representative of the album as a whole.

In Short: this is a wonderful album, just try not to let it cloud an otherwise sunny day.

In Other News:
On occasion I give thought to concluding this blog. Maybe it's just something that happens each month as other interests arise and my music library becomes somewhat overutilized.

Who is up for the Hobo Festival?