sun kil moon?

no offense, Daniel, i know you are not one pf them.

Who gives a fuck about pitchfork reviews?

― nostormo, Monday, February 3, 2014 4:47 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

insound.com does.

I don't care what they give it. I linked it because it means higher sales from what I've seen.

still blown away pfork linked to his yes cover

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/836

"A journalist recently compared my playing to Steve Howe’s. It’s taken 15 years for that to happen."

it's the sound of his newer stuff, more than the lyrics (but that, too), that makes me say ghosts of the great highway is better (from what i've heard so far). ghosts has this massive, hypnotizing wall of sound, and a menacing, dangerous undercurrent. the newer stuff -- while very good, don't get me wrong -- sounds smaller, less ambitious, intentionally more slight, and the focus on mundane, everyday subjects in the lyrics reinforces the idea that the songs are smaller. to be fair, that's largely me focusing on the last album, which had some high-points, but sounded really awkward to me at times. maybe it was a transitional album, leading to benji. i'm still excited to hear new kozelek, and this album in particular.

hard to imagine anything will ever equal this song, tho:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKRA7weVyLs

Sorry that
I could never love you back
I could never care enough
In these last days

__________________________

Can't count to
All the lovers I've burned through
So why do I still burn for you
I cannot say

my god, those lyrics still kill.

All true. Though I think the delivery and phrasing is what makes it seem more powerful lyrically. Themes of death should be more crushing but the compositions and conversational approach does make it feel much smaller.

I might suggest that part of the idea is that death IS small, which is one of the reasons it's frightening and devastating. It's here all the time, a bit of a paradox b/c its omnipresence both makes it mundane and possibly, when you think about that, more disturbing. Death is small because we're all small, here one moment and gone the next.

that's interesting, and there's a lot of truth to it. i'm going to think about that when i begin listening to this album.

I'm struggling to think of another rock album in which a comparable number of specific biographical details and banalities are included. You get an incredibly comprehensive picture of who Kozelek is and what he cares about. (I realize that many will not find this notion endearing or interesting.)

I still prefer Perils From the Sea, though.

The idea that *this one* might be his late-career breakout is kind of hilarious, actually. It's a pretty strange album.

It's a pretty strange album.

i've only sampled part of it, but i bet this is right.

I can live with the sky falling out from above
I can live with your scorn, your sourness, your smug
I can live growing old alone if push comes to shove
But I can't live without my mother's love

I can live flying 'round at an impossible pace
I can live with the bad ettiquette that's falling on this place
I can live with anything you've got to throw in my face
But I can't live without my mother's embrace

My mother is seventy five
She's the closest friend I have in my life
Take her from me I'll break down and bawl
And wither away like old leaves in the fall

You can be cruel all you want talk bad on my brothers
Shoot me full of holes and I won't by bothered
Judge me for my ways and my slew of my ex-lovers
But don't ever dare say a bad word 'bout my mother.

When she's gone I'll miss her how slowly she walks
Playing scrabble with the chimes of the grandfather clock
I'll even miss the times that we fought
But mostly I'll miss being able to call her and talk.

I can live without watching the classical fights
I can live without a lover beside me at night
I can live without what you might call a charmed
But I can't live without my mother providing her light

My mother is seventy five
One day she won't be here to hear me cry
When the day comes for her to let go
I'll die off like a lemon tree in the snow
When the day comes for her to leave
I won't have the courage to sort through her things
With my sisters and all our memories
I cannot bear all the pain it will bring.

interesting in its hyper-confessional nature. when it's good, it has the power of neil young's best, most bracing, most direct lyrics.

gonna ruin somebody's day by saying this but when kozelek gets to near-rapping he sounds like the dude from Everclear

you have dishonored the name of "kozelek."

a lyric snippet out of this (otherwise edgy, interesting) richard ramirez song illustrates the highs-and-lows of kozelek's lyrics:

i don't like this gettin' older stuff
having to pee 50 times a day is bad enough
got a nagging prostate and i gotta bad back
when i fuck too much i feel like i'm gonna have a heart attack

so, the overall theme about the scariness and dignity of aging is a good focus for a record, and an artist. and a lot of times, kozelek nails that feeling perfectly. but the laundry-list of ailments feels a little artless and kvetch-y. and trying to squeeze in the extra words in the last line ("i'mgonnahaveaheartattack") makes it awkward.

to some extent, this is over-complaining. the just out-of-sync vocal harmonies and the dark, heavy-sounding guitar lines give the song an evil vibe. and that, i love.

at 53 richard ramirez died; but in 83, he was very much alive
he was the scariest killer in the land
had a pentagram in the center of his hand

kozelek's songs sometimes drip blood, which is a good thing.

gonna ruin somebody's day by saying this but when kozelek gets to near-rapping he sounds like the dude from Everclear

― da croupier, Monday, February 3, 2014 10:08 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol this is pretty otm

It's not just the lyrics that are noteworthy for their oddness. Those backing vocals on "I Love My Dad" for instance are, uh, a choice. I guess. And I could have gone with more Will Oldham and less multitracked Koz.

so, lyrically, here's where sun kil moon is at its best. there's this hazy, hypnotic guitar-driven song, with kozelek singing about loving mundane things, like watching late-night cable and debates over which old pro-boxer was more hated or more loved, and nostalgic things, about behaving like his dad before him. it's wistful, a little sad, a little sweet, and makes me think about what it means to grow older. then, bam.

I buried my first victim
When I was nineteen
Went through her bedroom
And the pockets of her jeans
And found her letters
That said so many things
That really hurt me bad

I never breathed
Her name again
But I like to dream
About what could have been
I never heard her calls again
But I like to dream

now maybe this is a metaphor for kozelek breaking up with a girlfriend. that's a possible reading. but it seems too literal to me for that. and what a swerve. most of his lyrics i love for the reasons appearing above the block-quote, but kozelek has the ability to really surprise.

by the way, setting aside the serial-killer lines, the rest of the song today made me think of how much i miss my maternal grandfather (died when i was 10) and grandmother (died when i was in my 30s), how much i'd give to speak to them, even one more time, again, and how much they'd love my daughter.

I'm loving this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejBfyKd3WSs

Daniel I've had pretty much the exact same feelings about that song. The murder angle is jarring but so well done. And the nostalgic imagery just before it has always grabbed me in the same way.

the live version of "I Love My Dad" on the bonus disc is hilarious

Kozelek - "Do you guys get that reference or not? Edgar Winter was an albino..."

Lone audience member - "woo!"

Kozelek - *annoyed grunt*

Hahaha! Picking this up today at the shop I used to work at.

this album is really fucking good

can't stop listening to this

iiiii haaaaate thissss recorrrrd

lol

why

is the nels cline hating a joke?

What do you have against Nels Cline? This is the second time you’ve brought him up in one of your albums. Has he tried to retaliate? Do you secretly like him?

Honestly, I don’t know anything about him. I saw Wilco live only once, in New Orleans, and on TV once. I decided to name off a bunch of guitarists I liked, in the chorus of “Bramble,” but then thought it would be more dynamic if I named a few I hated. The thing is, I don’t hate anybody. His name just rhymed with whatever came before it, and people laughed. So on Benji, I did it again. I do things twice, sometimes, like how I did “UK Blues” and “UK Blues 2.”

i dont understand why someone would hate this record, unless you dont like mark kozelek's music. and if thats the case, then why the fuck are you listening to it?

I can understand someone loving ghosts and not liking this record

he also mentions Panera Bread twice and his uncle twice on this record

that is fantastic

i have a little trouble reconciling the deep-redneck trash-burning uncle and the presumably exurban panera bread flirting dad. maybe they are from different branches of the family. kozelek cosmology. also this record is great.

I don't know where you're getting "exurban" -- it says elsewhere on the record that he was an eighth grade dropout. Panera Breads are everywhere. You see truckers getting coffee at rest-stop starbucks. I feel like you're speaking from kind of a narrow idea of what a working/middle class family might look like.

i dont understand why someone would hate this record, unless you dont like mark kozelek's music. and if thats the case, then why the fuck are you listening to it?

― everyday sheeple (Michael B), Tuesday, February 18, 2014 11:24 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can understand someone loving ghosts and not liking this record

― the Norwegians are leaving! (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, February 18, 2014 11:25 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah within the Kozelek world this record is very distinct, even if the MK/Desertshore record was a direct "warm up" that lead to it.

AFP and Benji are so similar on the outside but are so very different in context.

Some people have been pointing out the Newtown song as the weak spot of the album, but I think he does something kind of neat with it that relates to a larger theme of the record. When he talks about the Norway killer, there's a great moment where he says "they didn't really care, but I did (pause) cause I got a lot of friends out there." At first you think "but I did" is a self-righteous thing, but it's actually about his personal connection to the tragedy. In the same way, he writes about Newtown not because he heard it on the news, but because a fan (from Newtown I think) wrote to him and asked him to pray about it, so once that connection was made he felt compelled to do something. It all ties back to the line in Song Remains "whenever anything close to me at all in the world died/ To my heart, forever, it would be tied." Same force that motivates him to write a song for the second cousin he didn't know well, and for his dad's friend who he spent the day with.

he doesn't rap on ghosts

Yeah I totally read that song to drive the concept that we shouldn't let moments of tragedy leave our thoughts even when time has passed or something happy is happening to us personally. As a way to stay grounded? Not necessarily to keep depression perpetual throughout our lives- which a Kozelek non-fan might joke.

can't stop listening to this

― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 18 February 2014 15:20 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Same. So good.

I love the short, descending string melody (mandolin?) in Carissa - it's like he gave her her own "theme" as part of the eulogy.

sry it's nylon string guitar

i tried to listen to this in the shop but somehow i think there is a maximum of kozelek albums you need in your life and i have surpassed it. in the end it is always the first ep and the rollercoaster album i come back to. his vocal delivery on the new one really turns me off. he has completely given up singing, it is not even sprechgesang anymore here. and i am not too interested in his personal stories.

they have panera bread at truck stops?

http://linktown.wcnc.com/biz/panera-bread/amherst/oh/44001/15641266

it's even in ohio. story checks out.

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/82ec9715-e9d8-44d0-9dab-4491465ef816.jpg

http://www.mightysweet.com/mesohungry/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/03-Panera_Ohio.jpg

is that a picture of heaven?

it is so beautiful.

lol

"Whut the hell is a Panera Bread. I'm hungry, I'mma go keel me a possum"

serves the possum right. they're super-gross.