Red House Painters - Target Commercial

Red House Painters
Cabezon

A few days ago, I was idly listening to the news on TV when I heard a song for a Target Commercial and looked up immediately. Again, I thought maybe someone left the CD player on because it was the intro Red House Painters song Cabezon from the album Ocean Beach.

Not only was I impressed because Ocean Beach is one of my favorite RHP albums, but it’s pretty cool that Target chose this song for two reasons. The first - it’s from one of their older albums (originally 1995, re-released in 1999?), and second - even though it is the first track on the album (so marketing probably was just demoing a bunch of different older indie albums to glean some tracks, and they got lucky because this perfect song for their commerical was the first one) it’s NOT a hit single. In fact it’s an instrumental, so the only way you might have known that was if you had the album (or cheated and visited their site).

But I knew it right off, because this is one of my favorite RHP albums. We always used to listen to this on road trips, especially those up to San Francisco where the Red House Painters are from. RHP, by the way, is mostly Mark Kozelek w/ friends. He’s fronting a new band called Sun Kil Moon, but I haven’t been keeping up with that vehicle as much. So, I’ve no idea if he still plays out as RHP.

Also interesting - I happen to know what Cabezon is (and no, it’s not the SoCal city or Outlet Mall) from my fishing days. It’s a type of spiny fish, a sculpin, that lives along the California coast. I’m not sure if the song refers to the fish, however.

The song itself is a bit of an anomaly for RHP - the music consists of a prominent acoustic guitar that’s much more sunny than mopey, along w/ drums and bass. The melody is downright cheerful, as opposed to the melancholy navel-gazing that originally drew me to their music. By the way, if you’ve never heard RHP be prepared for songs that break the slow-speed barrier. Amazingly, in concert they can be even slower than on album.

Hmm… I can’t seem to find the album in the Itunes search. Not sure if all their stuff is on Itunes actually…

by Bryan