POP MUSIC REVIEW : Mystical Colors From Art-Rockin’ Red House Painters

When the young San Francisco band Red House Painters played at Bogart’s a few months ago, singer Mark Koselek stayed home sick and his three bandmates played an all-instrumental set. Overall, it wasn’t really that much different on Monday at the Largo when the band performed with Koselek. That’s not a knock at the singer, but a tribute to the seamlessness of the group’s ethereal music.

While many young art-rockers are piling on layers of sounds, Red House Painters have stripped their music to bare bones. Koselek’s stream-of-consciousness vocals and images float against the gossamer music, sort of like Morrissey with the Smiths, only a lot slower. Monday there were echoes of tragic poet-singer Nick Drake, eccentric surrealist Robert Wyatt and occasionally “Ummagumma” Pink Floyd.

Koselek was the storm within the calm, visually and lyrically. He seemed nervous and ill at ease--a sharp contrast to placid bassist Jerry Vessel and drummer Anthony Koustos. But those contrasts didn’t disturb the unity of the songs. So strangely, seductively mystical was the style that even a radically reworked version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” seemed to radiate peaceful acceptance rather than nationalist defiance.

Opener Charlie Parks’ neo-Sinatra-Costello-Stipe saloon act meshed well with the headliners’ style, his sharp lyrics, sly melodies, slicked hair and slightly rumpled suit making him seem a Harry Connick Jr. for R.E.M. fans.