sun kil moon?

SKM used to be the all-time favourite band of a friend of mine, but not anymore - I think since Among The Leaves, I remember how he cited the lyrics of Sunshine In Chicago as a major example of Kozelek's decline.
Coupled with various bits I heard of both music & reports of Kozelek madness, I've followed my friend's advice to stick to the earlier records. 'April' remains absolutely stunning.

is this an SKM album or the new "Mark Kozelek" album (s/t)? because I started listening to this yesterday and I actually liked the first song, which is the first thing I've liked since Among the Leaves.

oh I guess there is an SKM album ('this is my dinner'). I know a few people who are really into these albums, they find them immensely interesting. I find them mind-numbingly dull. i don't know what he's thinking.

I gave it another go, skipping 'Linda Blair' this time. Some of the music's not too bad, better than the last few records. I even quite enjoyed 'Candles'. And there's nothing here quite as obnoxious as him corpsing while reading out earnest fan letters in the middle of a song.

No desire to listen to it ever again though.

"SKM used to be the all-time favourite band of a friend of mine, but not anymore - I think since Among The Leaves"

Mark would have made things much easier if he had retired the Sun Kil Moon moniker after that album came out. It's annoying to have to bookend any discussion/recommendation with a big loud disclaimer given half of his releases are the antithesis of the other half under SKM.

Benji is the kind of album you can only make once. I don't really know what to do with most of the stuff he's released since, and also his frequent pissiness is kind of insufferable.

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