Mark Kozelek’s fourth LP as Sun Kil Moon is a simple album in that it is just one man signing with a guitar, and nothing more. Ten tracks stretch out, sometimes for too long, forming an hour-length album that is perhaps best described by identifying what it is not. It is not an album filled with production tricks or gimmicks—the only pyrotechnics occurring when Kozelek double-tapes his voice to add stereo strength and presence to his at times whispery delivery. It is not an album with much to grab onto—the hooks, if you can call them that, occur in thoughtful but discrete repetitions, often in the form of an echoed guitar line or melody, other times in the form of a recalled phrase or lines. It is not, above all, an album ready-made for a breezy listen. Kozelek guitar and singing are moody, introspective, and occupied heavily with love—both lost and gained—loneliness, memory and isolation—thankfully, he does this all quite well.
The six minute and twenty six second opener “Alesund” is a good representation for the album as a whole. For the first minute and fifteen seconds, Kozelek plucks and strums bright and then somber lines, giving much pronunciation to each note. At a minute twenty, an incredibly faint breath steps to a microphone. Then, ten-seconds later, Kozelek quietly sings, “No this is not my guitar/ I’m bringing it to a friend./ No I don’t sing/ I’m only humming along.” The irony, here, is quite thick, given that we just heard him play his guitar for over a minute without any words spoken, followed by what is up to the point of his double-denunciation, four lines of him singing a song. Kozelek delivers his lyrics in a methodically flat baritone, and this adds a weightiness to his sound that can strip the irony away and leave his sincere intentions standing bare. Obviously, it is his guitar and, obviously, it is him singing. He continues, “Up here in the air/ I’m just moaning at the clouds/ wanting to be known/ while I pass the lonely hours.” He unlocks the contradiction of the first four lines with the rest of the verse; he does not play guitar or sing just for the sake of the performance. Rather, these tools of the performance are the extensions of his true intentions: a search for acknowledgement and someone more tangible than a cloud to hear his voice while he floats around aimlessly, in the air. He is bitter towards both his instrument and voice because, in a way, he resents what they represent: a need within him to connect. And that’s all in the first two-minutes of the record.
Throughout, Kozelek strings together narratives and set-pieces as short as the one mentioned above and as long as two or three verses. The attention required for the payoff is sometimes not worth it. However, even his overly complex moments have their charm. His guitar playing is precise and balanced. His voice, too, is balanced and restrained, always in tandem and never in discord with his guitar. The glaring faults, really, come in the form of sticky-bun metaphors. Examples abound like this one on “Australian Winter,” “The ocean beneath me is loneliness.” It’s hard to really hate, though, on lyrics normally as sigh-inducing as this because Kozelek delivers with such sincerity and evenness that you wonder, maybe there really is an ocean filled with lonely beneath this guy. It’s this type of honest earnestness that encourages the album’s sense of intimacy. For those willing to lean in close, Kozelek offers up a rewarding hour of connection.
