erasing clouds
 

Sun Kil Moon, April

by dave heaton

I’m not sure it’s worth trying to capture Mark Kozelek’s music in words. He’s one of those musicians who has a singular gift for being himself, above all else, in music, and for creating uniquely moody music of his own. That is, no matter whether it’s a Red House Painters album or a Mark Kozelek album or, currently, a Sun Kil Moon album, it will feature that same uniquely hazy, time-stopping, daylight-capturing, slow-motion singer/songwriter/poet thing that he does. Even when he takes to covering another band – John Denver, AC/DC or, on the entire last Sun Kil Moon album, Modest Mouse – he somehow makes their music sound just like him. April is another album in that legacy, and it’s a mistake to describe it under any other terms. It’s not a departure, not a landmark, but another fine example of the type of abstract yet very specific music Kozelek makes. Abstract in mood, but filled with details that paint specific pictures of moments and places.

April starts out not with the relatively more hook-y songwriting of the first Sun Kil Moon LP, Ghosts of the Great Highway, but with a melancholy Sunday afternoon song that instantly paints a picture: “I came out from under her warm sheets / into the brisk late October.” Titled “Lost Verses”, the song is like a series of descriptive verses, gently continuing on for almost 10 minutes, though there’s an optimistic chord-change break around the four-minute mark and a more drastic transition into rock n’ roll electric guitar around the eight-minute mark. Both are breathtaking moments in their own way, an introduction, if you needed one, into the way Kozelek’s idiosyncratic daydream music can be as exhilarating as it is beautiful.

Kozelek’s voice itself is a personality trait all his own. His singing here tends toward the blurry, towards the indistinct if you’re not closely listening. April is like that, too – it can feel like one repeating wash of the same feeling, the same atmosphere. Yet within these waves there’s an ample array of visceral, specific hooks and surprises, musical and lyrical. The nearly seven-minute “Heron Blue” sets an especially dark Kozelek vocal over guitars that twist and turn together in a riveting way. (You could listen to April, like any Kozelek album, solely as a guitar album, nothing more, and be no less transfixed by it.) “Moorestown” is a clear shot of nostalgia about people and places, another in a legacy of Kozelek songs that bring specific places to life; in this case, a town on the Jersey Shore. The structure of the 10-minute “Tonight the Sky” picks up on Kozelek’s obvious Crazy Horse love, but there’s nothing obvious about the song itself. “Like the River” finds Kozelek singing with Bonnie “Prince” Billy” on harmony; that simple turn is like sun coming through the clouds. It’s something Kozelek rarely does, and they sound brilliant together.

It’s in no way belittling to say April is a typical Kozelek album. It does feel that way, but it also feels truly special, magical.

{www.caldoverderecords.com/}


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