Mark Kozelek

Seminal San Francisco singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters goes solo and spreads out the beauty of toneful guitar wash, releasing lush walls of comforting sonic textures with all the warmth of an electric blanket on a rainy Sunday morning. But it is the unfeigned sincerity of his wistful, breathy and textured vocals that has the power to either melt polar ice caps or birth them (imagine an even more heavyhearted Nick Drake). Kozelek's own pensive love songs often walk the line between poetic revering and bruised, melancholic laments that seem to rise from the heavy repercussions of the heart's trials and tribulations. It is here where Kozelek emits his most intense performances, letting the listener into his "cold, solitary kingdom," as he once sang.