It should come as no secret that Mark Kozelek is a musical idol of mine. I consider him to be the best songwriter and lyricist out there. His ear for bone chilling, heart-breaking melodies and guitar arpeggios rarely seems to diminish, and he delivers some of the most heart on your sleeve, honest, passionate, direct and emotional lyrics of any singer out there. Kozelek first arrived with his band Red House Painters who released their 1992 debut album on 4AD Records. In retrospect they are now considered to be one of the greatest and most consistent Folk/Rock bands of the 90s. The 00s saw a change of name to Sun Kil Moon, but it was basically Mark's continuation of the project, instead housed on his own record label Caldo Verde. He has put out many solo albums, studio albums, live albums and collaborations under his own name and the Sun Kil Moon moniker throughout the last two decades.
2013's 'Perils From the Sea' album (originally planned to be released under the name Sun Kil Moon & The Album Leaf, but changed to Mark Kozelek & Jimmy LaValle at the last minute) saw a drastic shift in Mark's songwriting, lyrical and vocal style. He seemed to put less emphasis on singing and contemporary Folk songwriting, and instead started delivering these long, rambling stories that were half sung, half spoken word. Over the many albums that followed including his critically acclaimed 'Benji' and 'Universal Themes', Mark expanded on this style even further and really started delivering much more experimental works. Since 2013 he has entered the most prolific stage of his career. Where once he would put out an album every 2 years, now he is consistently putting out about 3 albums a year! The lyric booklets (or posters) that come with his CDs fold out like road maps.
In 2017 alone, Mark Kozelek has released 3 studio albums in January, May and July respectively (one being a double album), amounting in 4 hours of brand new material and a LOT of spoken word. I'm going to review all 3 of them in one, long Kozelek style rambling mess!
COMMON AS LIGHT & LOVE ARE RED VALLEYS OF BLOOD
Caldo Verde Records.
Folk, Spoken Word, Alternative Rock, Singer/Songwriter.
Listening Format: CD
As I mentioned in the introduction, Mark Kozelek has switched to a Spoken Word style to the point where he barely even sings any more. 'Common As Light & Love Are Red Valleys of Blood' is by far one of his most striking and experimental works yet, pushing this new Spoken Word style further than he ever has before. In comparison, 'Jesu / Sun Kil Moon' and 'Universal Themes' had plenty of Spoken Word passages, but also had a fair bit of singing as well. This DOUBLE album comes unquestionably close to being a full on Rap album. But make a note, it is certainly not a Hip Hop album (yes there is a difference), though it does contain a longer lyric sheet than Kendrick Lamar's 'To Pimp a Butterfly'. Many of the tracks on this album see drummer Steve Shelley laying down a Hip Hop inspired kick and snare drum beat as Mark delivers every single thought he has ever had in 2016 out loud. The songs are all very, very repetitive, largely built on one groove and rarely switching up. If you are lucky there might be some sort of chorus.
One of the most interesting things about being a Mark Kozelek fan recently is following his stories album to album. Familiar lyrical themes continue to crop up and he will reference celebrities or real life people in his life across multiple albums, or sometimes even follow up on a story he has already told on a previous song. It's rare to hear something this meta and self-referential in Rock and Folk music. Again Hip Hop is really the most prominent genre where an artist's lyrics will talk about other celebrities, real life people they know, and even mention themselves in the third person. It genuinely would not surprise me if Mark Kozelek had been listening to a lot of Hip Hop around the time he began writing this album. Mark's main lyrical stories on not just this album, but most of his recent albums seem to revolve around the following: His girlfriend Caroline. I feel like I practically know her from the amount Mark talks about what they get upto! Mark's favourite HBO shows. He loves True Detective! Touring and playing shows. There is often an obligatory story of an experience he had playing a particular show, or getting heckled by a crowd member. He talks about US politics a lot, touching upon his views on Trump, Clinton and guns quite often (he is anti-gun which is refreshing to hear). But the most emotionally involved stories of his often come when he describes friends and family members who have tragically passed away before their time. Mark Kozelek seems to be surrounded by death and tragedy. The way he went into so much painstaking detail about the death of his cousin Carissa in a house fire on 'Benji''s 'Carissa' has lead to not just one of his greatest songs, but truly one of the greatest songs of the decade. Mark certainly has a lot of interesting stories to tell, and name drops a lot of other musicians. There is a hilarious tongue in cheek moment 2 minutes into 'Philadelphia Cop' where Mark stops the song to pretend to take a phone call from Sufjan Stevens!
However whether or not the listener finds Mark's stories interesting or not, or whether or not they have the patience to endure them is a big test on this album. It is OVER 2 HOURS long, of basically non stop rambling. There are barely any moments where the music is just allowed to play, and it kind of makes the musicianship take a backseat to Mark's voice. Also as much as I love to hear Mark sing (I've listened to him for days on end) hearing his monotone voice speaking for 2 hours is a rather draining experience. Listening to this album in full starts to become akin to listening to an audio commentary track on a DVD. I feel like in terms of the music and songs here, this isn't Kozelek at his best. 5 or the 16 tracks presented here exceed the 9 minute mark, and only have one or two actual melodies or distinct sections to show for. Many tracks leave the Folk realm entirely. 'Philadelphia Cop' and 'The Highway Song' both sound very Funk inspired. There are a few tracks that feel like legitimate songs. 'I Love Portugal' is a standout that actually has a chorus you can sing along to. 'Bergen to Trondheim' is a moving tribute written after the passing of Muhammad Ali (Mark's love of boxing has always been a common theme in his writing). But on the flipside 'Sarah Lawrence College Song' has a very unpleasant chorus hook that you just wish had not been included.
'Common As Light...' is an incredibly self indulgent album that is basically just a vehicle for Mark to express as many of his inner monologues as possible. The album transpires like somebody reading out loud their diary or autobiography, and the music often feels second rate, especially coming from such a master songwriter. Nothing comes close to the emotionally invested and heart warming classics he has written such as 'Carry Me Ohio', 'Katy Song', 'Lost Verses' or 'I Watched the Film The Song Remains the Same'. I genuinely want to praise this album for its ambitions. It's like Mark has actually managed to invent Folk Rap with this album. And the album breaks the fourth wall so hard that it is strangely mesmerizing and certainly a unique listening experience. But I feel like in terms of songwriting and album flow, listening to the entire thing is too much of an overwhelming and exhausting experience to really enjoy. It would have been a much more successful outing if all the fat had been trimmed away. So much of this album is excruciating to sit through, even for experienced Mark Kozelek fans. I feel like a newbie to his work would be even more bewildered by this double album. And consider that this is just the first of 3 albums to be released by Mark in 2017! 6/10.
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30 SECONDS TO THE DECLINE OF PLANET EARTH
Caldo Verde Records.
Folk, Spoken Word, Alternative Rock, Singer/Songwriter.
Listening Format: CD
So as if Mark Kozelek dropping a double album of Spoken Word driven Folk music wasn't enough, a few months later arrives ANOTHER album of... Basically more of the same. At least it isn't a double album this time, but it is still SEVENTY SEVEN MINUTES IN LENGTH... Dear God...
The main difference between this album and 'Common As Light...' is that Justin K Broadrick of Godflesh and Jesu fame has written the bulk of the music. Mark basically just acts as primary lyricist and vocalist this time around. Justin and Mark became friends a few years ago after Mark happened to attend a Godflesh concert and was blown away... And yes he even wrote about the experience in 'The Possum' on Sun Kil Moon's 'Universal Themes' album. He also recorded a great Folk rendition of Godflesh's classic 'Like Rats'. Musically it is fairly similar to the sounds Kozelek conjured up on 'Common As Light...'. Lots of lengthy, drawn out, repetitive and stream of consciousness dirges. Except this time Broadrick has favoured programmed drums over Steve Shelley's live drums. There is a less of a Folk influence and more of an Electronic influence this time around.
Sadly this album is really a low point in the career of both of these legendary artists who I consider heroes of mine. At least their first collab had a bit more variety, with Broadrick even managing to successfully implement his droning, distorted guitars in the mix. Here these lengthy songs sound very rushed, using very unmemorable, entry level Electronic beats that barely hold any atmosphere or depth. In terms of an album flow as well, plonking a 17 minute long meandering track of nothingness into just the second track in the tracklist is just poor album structuring. I wanted to give up on the entire album about 5 minutes into this go nowhere track, but I managed to stick it out. On this track, 'Wheat Bread', Mark rambles on about hanging out at South By SouthWest and going on dates with his girlfriend Caroline. Once again, it feels like Mark has ran out of any fresh or interesting stories to tell and is just repeating things again. He already talked about the SXSW festival on 'Philadelphia Cop'. This 17 minute dross barely qualifies as a song, it is just infuriating to listen to. 'Needles Disney' is just as excruciating, describing a junkie wandering around Disneyland. 'The Greatest Conversation Ever In the History of the Universe' is about as mundane as the song title is to read. Another 10 minutes of second rate Electronica and Mark rambling on. The song ends with the lyrics "I'm gonna go to sleep now, there's nothing more to write". I mean... Really? The first time I got to the 5th track 'He's Bad' I actually just turned this album off and was like "FUCK THIS, I'M THROWING IN THE TOWEL! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE"!!! 'He's Bad' is Mark's commentary on Michael Jackson and whether MJ was a paedophile or not. I mean really, it's 2017 and you are choosing NOW to express this message? And this is coming from a musician who released a beautiful cover version of 'I'll Be There' in tribute to him after he died. The song has the chorus 'He's Bad, He's dead and I'm glad", which is just in incredibly bad taste...
Honestly I did not look forward going back to finish off this record, but I felt like I had to. Fortunately just to tease me, the final track 'A Dream of Winter' is actually a good song. It sounds like a PROPER SONG!!! Mark Kozelek actually sings. The song has a familiar structure and rests on a beautiful acoustic guitar arpeggio with his best vocal delivery on the album by far. But everything else on this record sounds extremely rushed and knocked together. This album feels like a bunch of leftovers from both the first Jesu & Sun Kil Moon collab, as well as 'Common as Light...'. Another big problem is the timing of this release. Sun Kil Moon has already dropped a 2 hour + record that is incredibly dense and challenging. I don't think a lot of fans were ready for ANOTHER release so soon (with a third one on the way after that). Sadly I have to say this is without contest, the lowest point in both Justin and Mark's prolific and great music careers. 3/10.
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YELLOW KITCHEN
Caldo Verde Records
Folk, Spoken Word, Avant-Garde, Singer/Songwriter.
Listening Format: CD
It's safe to say that I wasn't exactly looking forward to this release, considering I wasn't exactly ecstatic about Mark Kozelek's two other albums of 2017. Even though this is a fairly similar sound and writing approach to the two Sun Kil Moon albums released earlier this year, this one was just released under the Mark Kozelek name for reasons unknown. This one is a collaboration with Parquet Courts' Sean Yeaton, so I was expecting to hear some noisy rock, perhaps similar to some of the cuts from 'Universal Themes'. What I heard instead was very far from that. Musically this album has a very diverse array of instruments. I've heard piano, horns, wind instruments and guitars all crop up throughout this album. The overall vibe though is very dark, discordant and esoteric. None of the songs here adhere to a traditional structure and it is by far the most experimental and haunting release that Mark Kozelek has ever been a part of.
On this release Mark Kozelek vocally does a very similar thing to the other albums. Lots of spoken word, singing kept to a minimum, lots of long rambling. Tracks range from 5-12 minutes, but an overall running time of 45 minutes is actually a breath of fresh air, making it the most easy to digest of the three releases he has made this year. Lyrically I guess it does repeat a lot of stories and themes that Mark has already expressed repeatedly. Opener 'Time to Destination' is a scathing bashing of the Trump/Clinton election run up. Whilst 'The Reasons I Love You' is literally a list of 10 reasons why he loves his girlfriend Caroline (who has practically become a star in her own right, cropping up on nearly every Mark Kozelek release since 2013).
Whilst I am still not completely sold on Mark's Spoken Word phase of writing, 'Yellow Kitchen' is actually one of the most interesting releases in this style and surprisingly my favourite of his 3 albums released in 2017. It is genuinely the most unique and experimental. Mark's rambling fits really well over this experimental musicianship composed by Sean Yeaton, and evokes a whole different mood and vibe to the previous two 2017 albums. This is really dark and eerie stuff, and Mark's voice adapts very well to these weird sounds. I've heard some people compare this to Scott Walker's 'The Drift' and it is a pretty apt comparison. This is really strange and sinister, and I am genuinely enjoying it a lot more than I expected I would. Closing song 'Daffodils' literally sounds nightmarish and has Mark Kozelek barking like a wild dog. Surprisingly the album that seems to be getting the least attention from critics and fans is actually the best! 7/10.
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CONCLUSION
This new Spoken Word phase of Mark Kozelek's career is what I like to call his "midlife crisis" phase. The guy is heading towards 50 years old now and he is probably tired of just writing amazing Folk music. Whilst I do miss how Mark would write these achingly beautiful guitar melodies and sing his heart out, I do appreciate this new direction he has taken. Mark Kozelek has genuinely released some of the most evocative, boundary pushing and experimental releases of the decade. I also get the impression that he is just doing whatever the fuck he wants, with whoever he wants, and he doesn't care about what anyone else thinks or even about album sales so much. But I think if he really, really wants to succeed in this style, he just needs to slow the fuck down. You don't need to be putting out 3 albums a year, or repeating the same ideas and lyrical themes. The rule of "quality over quantity" should still apply. Instead of releasing 4 hours of music in the space of 6 months, if Mark Kozelek had thought to just pick the best hour of all this material and release that instead, I think he would have made a far larger impression. It is one thing to challenge your listeners and fans, but Mark has gone a step too far and overloaded and bombarded his fans with too much material that becomes tedious to wade through. There is a bit of gold in all 3 of these releases, but it has not exactly been a pleasant experience wading through all 4 hours of it.
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