sun kil moon?

y'mean the new one, or just in general?

Sun Kil Moon S/D?

That thread is weird. I've never seen him play a dud show.

Also: Sun Kil Moon -- April

No love for Admiral Fell Promises? That album is just gorgeous.

Its good, but less gorgeous than the two preceeding it.

I'm really enjoying the sound of nylon strings, and the classical and spanish influences on this album. It's a little shift in direction for him.

Alesund is so gorgeous.

lol at song titles for next record due out in May:

I Know It’s Pathetic But That Was The Greatest Night Of My Life
Sunshine In Chicago
The Moderately Talented Yet Attractive Young Woman vs. The Exceptionally Talented Yet Not So Attractive Middle Aged Man
That Bird Has A Broken Wing
Elaine
The Winery
Young Love
Song For Richard Collopy
Among The Leaves
Red Poison
Track Number 8
Not Much Rhymes With Everything’s Awesome At All Times
King Fish
Lonely Mountain
UK Blues
UK Blues 2
Black Kite

so what do you guys think of the desertshore record?? i like it. it's like "old ramon" but less lugubrious

Those titles read like an article in The Onion!

Lugubrious, good word that. Saying something from Mark Kozelak is "less lugubrious" is like saying knife wounds hurt less than gunshot wounds, though.

yeah. turtle pond and mercy are not exactly "party songs"

i think (hope) kozelek is taking the piss with those titles -- or at least the three longest ones

Skip to 5:40 to hear / watch Sunshine In Chicago...

http://www.southernsouls.ca/mark-kozelek/

"Sunshine in Chicago makes me feel pretty sad / My band played here a lot in the nineties when we had / lots of female fans and fuck they all were cute / now I just sign posters for guys in tennis shoes"

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/8845-mark-kozelek/

This one might be something else from grumpy ol' Mark.

sounds like the record AFTER this one might be all time great

I'd like to hear the full-band again sometime, but it seems he has to grow tired of the nylon strings first. Song weren't bad, but I'm only semi-excited for this one, though I'm a big fan.

i like this album a whole lot, certainly more than admiral fells promises; the immediacy and almost tossed-off-edness of the lyrics is a nice change. it's a much more eitzel-like record (long song titles, more tongue in cheek).

out today. some creepy lyrics!

what about the new one, "among the leaves"? the cover art is horrid but the samples sound good.

it's pretty okay. mark kozelek getting more literally creepy in his lyrics was a development i could've done without

I love it. "Young Love" was one of my favorite songs of the year.

I dig it. It's definitely a change from his previous stuff... At least lyrically. He's much more matter of fact, self-deprecating and just plain assholish but it ends up being affecting as an album. Esp if you couple it w his new one w jimmy Lavalle

Loving this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHH-pAYaMEI

Lovely stuff.

normally i'm not a fan of lyrics that read like you've flipped open someone's daily-diary. a lot of teenpop lyrics read like this; it's okay, but i kinda think it's a little "artless," maybe? but mark kozelek absolutely, positively does this lyrical-style right.

lol i really really can't follow him down this road unfortunately, though i love the sax solo

his voice has deteriorated terribly

i can dig the destroyer-style arrangement, but i'm not into the rapping that he's doing or whatever. maybe i'm boring but i prefer serious koz to the post-admiral fell promises goofy koz.

he's pretty goofy on old ramon but it's a goofy i can get with

more songs about your cat

He has a knack for punctuating his new, more relaxed style with really devastating lines and songs here and there - or merging the style with super depressing vignettes (see Perils From the Sea).

Overall, I agree with monotony but I do enjoy this style too.

But yeah, it's like he became so fascinated with the serious guitar virtuoso/Andres Segovia and intricate/delicate melody approach on Admiral Fell Promises that he burnt himself out and has been doing something with an opposite vibe and approach since then.

And while I do enjoy this stuff so much (and it is often WAY more captivating live) either way, when I come back to AFP I'm knocked off my feet in comparison.

Yup, this is pretty far from the stunning brilliance of the first Sun Kil Moon album. Props for following his muse and all...

what is wrong with yall this shit owns

It's great! It just is much less great than the AFP style to me.

(Just noticed, having ordered from Caldo Verde for the 2 disc version and bonus live album, that Amazon are claiming to be stocking the limited 2-disc version in the UK, for a tenner anyway).

i still hate nils cline

and nels lofgren too

For an admitted fanboy of RHP, I had a fairly pronounced dropoff with Koz circa the first SKM record. Sadly, this doesn't restore much interest for me.

somehow the wonder of life prevails

Admiral Fell Promises may be a top 3 favorite album ever (so far) for me. Young Love was my favorite song off of the last one, which is arguably closest to AFP. I'm sure I'll enjoy the new one a lot but I don't think it'll compare ultimately.

he doesn't practice as much as nils cline.

lmao what the heck

this kind of rules though

i still hate nils cline

oh, c'mon. he's awesome, especially when deployed as the secret-weapon in someone's pop or rock act (e.g., wilco and, on their last album, the equally-awesome tinariwen).

I don't think it was intended as a personal attack, rather just a (misspelled) lyrical reference.

i can play circles around jay farrar

I don't know, I think this is his best album by a distance. Songwriting is just incredible. So much detail to get lost in. Anyone know how much of his writing is based on actual people vs. invented characters?

this article makes it sound like a lot of it comes from actual people

It's a bit inconsistent but some of it is utterly devastating (perhaps helped along by a hard-going week at work and a bottle of red). Found the bit about 4ad's Ivo strangely emotional for some reason.

Man, brothers just tears my heart out

Ian Cohen forcing me to order that vinyl (whenever it becomes available) even more promptly. That stuff sells out quick enough as it is.

lol what the fuck is this

Has it been established whether he's actually ill or not? Fucking weird behaviour, if not.

Is it possible that J.D. Salinger wrote my favorite novel?
Yes, this is possible

one of the worst musicians in the world atm

He needs an editor. A fucking brutal one. And a friend.

Exactly my point. AFP showed that at the time he was arguably among one of the best.

Xp

i did see a video clip of him attempting to do an RHP song at an SKM show in Europe a few weeks ago and he didn't remember anhy of the words. the band though was able to play it. I was surprised he even attempted it.

I dunno, he releases stuff on his own now and it seems to sell consistently enough that he's not rethinking his approach to what he puts out. I've stopped buying it and I stopped seeing him live, but obv other people don't, so it's not like he has a label saying "LOL WTF OMG NO"

That confirms its an imposter! Real Mark went missing in 2013.

ok lol at the gurgling noises on 'linda blair'

what's funny is that it suddenly dawned on me that he would do it, just before he started doing it. i'm only a minute and a half in. and also, i can just tell he's going to do it again. this song is almost 12 minutes long!

loooooool it's happening again.

I got a lot of love for you, all you people here in Warsaw, Poland
If I gotta be honest, there's only one thing I’ll tell you that I don't love at all
It's the music of Steely Dan, it makes my skin crawl

ok a line has been crossed, fuck you MK

Oh man This Is Not Possible was on my Spotify list today, it’s just horrendous. There is no case to be made for it whatsoever on any level.

so is he trolling or just losing it?

Even the most die hard Kozelek fan I'm friends with hates it

this is very possible

why did he write a song called "The Moderately Talented Yet Attractive Young Woman vs. The Exceptionally Talented Yet Not So Attractive Middle Aged Man"

that was one of his last good songs

haha, well I'm surprised

I really like the Benji album, as did a bunch of lurkers iirc

I liked 'Benji' too; I like 'Perils from the Sea' even more. Pretty much everything I've heard since has been appalling.

I remember liking benji when it was released

Benji and Perils both good. Bridgers cover even better.

Kozelek & Desertshore is my favorite of the albums he did in his new style before totally going off the deep end.

The weirdest thing here (having only listened to Linda Blair) is how intricate and interesting the music in the background is. It's baffling that that level of musicianship has that vocal and those lyrics. How must those musicians feel?

To be honest the last song I loved was "Katy Song". After that everything he released got paler and paler. The collab with Desertshore was the last thing I purchased but only listened to once.

How must those musicians feel?

He's been working with the same folks a lot and they're probably very happy for the steady studio work.

half of the sun kil moon albums are pretty good. I'd still be having a good time. sometimes feels like he's in the "Everybody's Rockin'" phase of a Neil Young trajectory, but where rockabilly is modest mouse and the asshole record executive is himself. if he has a Weld or Harvest Moon later, the sum of his output will still be amazing? I think?

Benji is Tonight's the Night, and aerosol can explosions are the heroin btw.

he's a million miles away
from that beer-commercial guitar day

pic.twitter.com/CsOOGMopiz

— Ryley walker (@ryleywalker) November 12, 2018

the 'Fork finally gives up, a couple releases after most of the rest of us:

Kozelek isn’t the only songwriter who has had success with this mode of exhibitionist expression, of course, where the tiniest detail or circumstance plucked from day-to-day activity can offer an unexpected insight about life, loss, or emotion at large. After the death of his wife, Geneviève Castrée, Phil Elverum turned the act of taking out the day’s garbage into a moment of quiet desolation—and a jolting reminder as to why he had to keep going. Last year, Julie Byrne used the image of crossing the western United States to express a core of existential restlessness. Vivid songwriting, whether hip-hop or country, can hinge on these lived-in details. But during This Is My Dinner, Kozelek treats his songs like status updates on a Facebook account he again tells us he does not have. You often hear about bands leaving room for the singer, building up the lyrics rather than blocking them out. In this case, you wish that Kozelek had left any space at all for what sounds like a subtle, sophisticated backing crew, anchored by the expressive drumming of the Dirty Three’s Jim White. But, no: This is about Kozelek.

Recent themes return—Kozelek’s travels of Portugal and Norway, his anxiety over mass shootings, his subservience to his moods, how he understands pain better than the rest of us, his issues with his dad, how much meaning he extracts from boxers. What’s different here, though, is just how much we learn about Kozelek’s former virility and how losing it seems more bitter than sweet. He tells us about the time a promoter called him indie rock’s Wilt Chamberlain, the basketball star who claims to have slept with 20,000 women. He tries to dazzle with bygone tales of all the ménages à trois he’s had in Copenhagen and how he just doesn’t need them anymore. He vividly recounts escaping down frigid Oslo streets after a fan’s boyfriend caught her giving him a handjob and sucking his thumb. “When you’re in your 20s, in my opinion, nothing should be off limits,” Kozelek, 51, sings. Listening to This Is My Dinner is like going to a 25-year-high-school reunion and sitting beside the sad, divorced, and bloated former jock who tells you a dozen times about his game-winning touchdown at homecoming, then winks every time a pretty classmate walks by.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sun-kil-moon-this-is-my-dinner/

haha, nice one

Really liking the demos/live disc of Red House Painters - Retrospective. "Waterkill" is great and I'll have to listen to other demos on youtube to see if they should have included any other unreleased songs.

Hope I find another band that either equals or tops pre-Ocean Beach RHP for this kind of sad music.

A+ seagull singing on live version of "Mistress".

Idk what’s with that falsetto voice he used to do. He doesn’t realize how much it sounds like that or a cat. Like you might think he’s doing a silly muppet voice on purpose but it appears he was always dead serious.

It works for me.

I'm not necessarily always put off by it, it's just so odd to me because if anyone else did it faithfully they'd sound like they're making fun of it.

But his singing voice was always weird. Especially by the time he got to the SKM phase, his voice sounds perpetually like he's got a jawbreaker in his cheek when he sings/talks. Or like he's extremely congested? I don't know; it's clearly outside of his control. It could be that it was less of a thing in the earlier RHP days because at that time his style was to really enunciate everything. I probably wrote this exact post at some point upthread.

I'm just glad to have opened this thread and not found that he has said/done something stupid.

Is he on social media?

No, thank christ

counterpoint: if he was on social media he'd have probably put all his bullshit there instead

he doesn't write songs anymore he writes feeds

"thanks but i would've preferred this with no music and as a twitter thread"

"Funhouse" is just so gutting

I'm just glad to have opened this thread and not found that he has said/done something stupid.

― djh, Saturday, February 9, 2019 5:57 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ otm

Early demo "The Bridge" sounds so much like "Cemetery Gates" by Smiths. I've read that Kozelek really didn't know much alternative/college rock back then but maybe the other members did.

I've been playing "Carry Me, Ohio" from "Ghosts of the Great Highway" on Youtube a lot recently. Sort of amazed that I don't own it. I must have been in a really bad mood (or listening to Kompakt) the year it was released.

there's a good alt version on the reissue bonus disc