San Francisco's Red House Painters, an acoustic quartet led by introverted poet Mark Kozelek, penned the depressed mantras of Down Colorful Hill (1992): shy guitars that played chords as if they were reciting rosaries, and moribund dirges that seemed to end before beginning but then lasted for eternity, created quietly unnerving atmospheres that blurred the border between sorrow and ecstasy. Like with the music of Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley and Nick Drake , the effect was both subdued and majestic, a contradiction that became the quintessence of their art. The demo-quality of those recordings contributed to the sense of philosophical melancholy, but Red House Painters (1993), also known as Rollercoaster, revealed a much lighter and brighter mood: rather than whining, Kozelek was contemplating the universe. Each song was a moment in time, an impressionistic watercolor. Ocean Beach (1995) brought even more life to the compositions, dispensing with the most austere elements of their slow acoustic chamber folk.
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