Shanti Project Collection

They Say...

Review by Heather Phares, All Music Guide

As its title suggests, the Shanti Project Collection benefits the Shanti Project, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to improving the lives of AIDS patients and people living with the HIV virus. The album gathers new, rare, and unreleased tracks from Red House Painters, Low, Idaho, Hayden, and Misc, unifying the collection with a thoughtful, emotional, acoustic-based sound. Shanti Project Collection gets off to a brilliant start with Mark Kozelek and the Red House Painters, who turn in inspired covers of Neil Young's "Midnight on the Bay" and Genesis' "Follow You, Follow Me." Kozelek's melancholy voice and restrained guitar work can imbue meaning even into Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs" (which he did on the album Songs for a Blue Guitar), and these two covers prove that his interpretive skills are only growing. "Find Me, Reuben Olivares" and "Smokey," the two new Red House Painters songs, were originally meant to appear on the group's long-delayed album Old Ramon. Though they're just as heartfelt as Kozelek's earlier works, these songs are simpler but more mature, more direct, and all the more affecting for it. Low's icy, sinuous "Lazy" and gently flowing "Venus" are two of the album's prettiest moments, along with Idaho's rippling, subtle "Trip Over" and "The Sun Is All There Is." Toward its end, the album becomes darker, with Hayden's pair of muted ballads, "Wasting My Days Away" and "Choking." Misc's "Tired of Myself" pits moody, insistent guitars against an anguished monologue, and their droning instrumental "Compression" ends the album on a kinetic, if not upbeat, note. Even if this album wasn't dedicated to such a worthwhile cause, Shanti Project Collection would succeed as a collection of thought-provoking songs from like-minded artists, but the reason these songs were brought together makes the album that much more impressive.