Ghosts of the Great Highway

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Sun Kil Moon chronology
Ghosts of the Great Highway

Studio album by Sun Kil Moon
Released	2003
Genre	Alternative rock
Length	56.52
Label	Jetset Records
Producer(s)	Mark Kozelek
	Ghosts of the Great Highway (2003)	Tiny Cities (2005)

Ghosts of the Great Highway is the 2003 debut album by San Francisco quartet Sun Kil Moon, led by Red House Painters' founder Mark Kozelek, who composed all of the lyrics and music on this album. The other members are Geoff Stanfield, Anthony Koutsos and Tim Mooney.

The album is marked instrumentally by both quiet acoustic numbers (including the addition of Portuguese guitar to the instrumentation), gently winding country-influenced folk-rock and louder, Crazy Horse-esque distorted guitar. Vocally this album seems more extroverted than his previous work, the lyrics balancing epic tragedy ("Salvador Sanchez," "Pancho Villa" and "Duk Koo Kim", all titled for deceased boxers — "Pancho Villa" refers not to the revolutionary, but to a Filipino boxer who fought under that name), personal emotional states, and an occasionally surprising lightness of spirit ("Lily and Parrots," "Glenn Tipton").

"Glenn Tipton," the album's opener, is named for the guitarist of metal band Judas Priest, and makes comparative reference to the guitarist who replaced Tipton, K.K. Downing. Cassius Clay, Sonny Liston, Jim Nabors and Bobby Vinton are also name-checked in the song, with the observation that people tend to prefer one over the other.

"Duk Koo Kim" is a fourteen minute epic that stands out from the rest of the album for its shifting sonic waves of sound and for Kozelek's impassioned, flexible vocal performance. It is one of the most experimental tracks on the album, drawing more from psychedelia than the introspective country, folk and heavy rock of the rest of the album.

Ghosts of the Great Highway received positive reviews from the music press and its success paved the way for the release of a second Sun Kil Moon album in 2005, a collection of Modest Mouse cover songs called Tiny Cities.

Ghosts of the Great Highway has been scheduled to be re-issued as a double CD on Februay 6, 2007 on Kozelek's own label, Caldo Verde. The second disc features 6 bonus tracks.