July this year saw the release of Admiral Fell Promises, the third studio album of original material from Sun Kil Moon, ostensibly the front for the latest musical offerings from Mark Kozelek. This time around, Kozelek threw us all a curveball as he ditched the backing band for nothing more than a nylon-stringed classical guitar and his distinctive, multi-tracked voice.
And it’s brilliant. But how did he reach this point in his career, and how has Mark Kozelek managed to keep it together for the past 20 years or so? Is it the case that the song writing in the early years was the release on the pressure valve that we often need in life? Does the shift to writing about people and places mean that he’s comfortable with where he is now, or was that always the case?
Back in 1992, 4AD released what’s really a set of demos named
Down Colorful Hill by a band called Red House Painters. Made up of Kozelek, plus Anthony Koutsos, Jerry Vessel and Gordon Mack (Koutsos, Vessel and Phil Carney still appear live with Kozelek as Sun Kil Moon) this is where the journey began. Even back in those early days, Kozelek wasn’t afraid to let a song last as long as he felt necessary.
Down Colorful Hill begins with “24”, a 7 minute song about being scared of turning, yep, 24:
“so it's not loaded stadiums or ballparks
and we're not kids on swingsets on the blacktop
and i thought at fifteen that i'd have it down by sixteen
and twenty-four keeps breathing in my facelike a mad whore
and twenty-four keeps pounding at my door
like a friend you don't want to see”
The sound was, to an extent, typical of 4AD at that time as there’s something atmospheric and ethereal surrounding the melancholic (acoustic) guitar workout that the band became known for. This was followed by the 9 minutes of pain and loss titled “Medicine Bottle”, which became a template for RHP sound. From this early point it’s clear to me that Kozelek is releasing something out of himself by being this starkly confessional:
“the hurting never ends
like birthdays and old friends
we forget what is flesh blood and bone is human
turning phone lines to airlines
unwilling to face
the love is found on the inside not the outside
and like a medicine bottle
in the cabinet i'll keep you
and like a medicine bottle
in my hand i will hold you
and swallow you slowly
as to last me a lifetime...”
Whether it is a song about being in trouble with the old booze and pills, or whether it’s a metaphor for being addicted to being with a lover is something we can debate, but there’s no doubt the feelings are real.
The one minor quibble with
Down Colorful Hill is that the space-y sounding production doesn’t quite fit with Kozelek’s own production values on subsequent releases but, as a statement of intent it’s quite something.
1993 saw the release of the career-defining – some might say career high – of
Red House Painters, also known by the title
Rollercoaster due to the sepia-toned cover art. Produced by Kozelek, it’s an album of epic ambition at 74mins in length, but more importantly it’s epic in spirit and songcraft. Again, nakedly personal lyrics are to the fore alongside beautiful folk, pop moments, the classical guitar stylings mentioned in the opening to this post and strange experimental drone/dirges like “Funhouse.” There’s breezy moments like “Grace Cathedral Park”, a personal favourite of mine, and the record also sees the first appearance of Kozelek’s long-term muse and ex-girlfriend Katy (more of which later) in, of course “Katy Song”:
“you walked awayand left a bleeding part of me
empty and bothered
watching the waterquiet in the corner
numb and falling through
without you what does my life amount to?”
Kozelek has acknowledged that this album is seen by many as a high point, but has admitted he’s not keen on revisiting the time spent recording and producing the record, with only a few songs still played live today. Clearly a difficult record to make - and listen to at times - it’s no surprise then that an artist wouldn’t particularly want to spend time with old acquaintances like that.
Only a few months passed before more songs from that recording session surfaced as
Red House Painters II, or
Bridge, as most people know it, again because of the artwork. It’s more of the same as found on Rollercoaster and suffers slightly for that, but we do hear a lighter touch in RHP style as found in the delightful “I Am a Rock”, a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song, and an interesting take on “The Star Spangled Banner”.
It wasn’t until 1995 that we heard from RHP again, and the warmer, welcoming
Ocean Beach, an album full of bucolic folk, but with those epic excursions Kozelek was becoming famous for. The biggest change was a drop in the drone found in songs like “Funhouse”, and the album benefits from Kozelek finding his niche behind the recording desk, and from beginning to muse on place, as found in “Brockwell Park” a paean to a night in London....without Katy?
“if the days weren't so precious
and no worlds where shorted wires had kept us
things would be better than this
there's an angel by the ocean i miss
and trips on the train
before our lives changed...”
Kozelek sings of being away from home, distracted away from the celebrations in the park, thinking of someone on another continent. “San Geronimo” is another which talks of missing someone or somewhere
“somewhere up fifteen miles
sifting through crackling vinyl
lost memories of my you
thare coming into view
between lost hills divide
quietly we sleep inside
lost summers of my youth
i spent them all with you..... weekend in san geronimo
love how the starlit skies show
weekend in san geronimo
sentiment within me glows”
While the shift to places and memory in songwriting has taken place, there’s still the personal present in the lyrics, but Kozelek’s writing on
Ocean Beach seems more comfortable with addressing these issues, there’s even a small change in voice, a slight deepening of tone – he’s not 24 anymore of course.
1996’s
Songs for a Blue Guitar is where we find Kozelek and co. first embracing the electric Crazy Horse-style soloing that peppers the later work of Sun Kil Moon. It’s a change in direction that no-one expected, and also saw the beginning of Kozelek’s love of cover version, reworking songs by Yes, Wings and The Cars in his own inimitable style.
This is the Kozelek that I love best, still indulging in the lovely folk music that has peppered his career but expanding into electric, heavier areas. Unfortunately, this was the last that we were to see of RHP until 2001. The restructuring of major labels and indies in the late 90s claimed a lot of casualties, and the last RHP record
Old Ramon didn’t surface until 2001. By then, any momentum the band had was lost due to label machinations. It’s hard to see who is to blame – 4AD, Warners, or just the whole machine?
An RHP retrospective was released in 1999 (my first introduction to the band), but
Old Ramon was worth the wait, one of those “lost classics” people talk about when discovering some dusty old tapes in a record company’s vault. It’s very much in the vein of
Songs... containing the same mix of folk and Crazy Horse-ness, but with songs written for Kozelek’s cat (“Wop a Din Din) there’s certainly a lighter mood present:
“She's got big green eyes
And a long Egyptian face
She moves across the floor
At her own pace
When I'm here in bed
She'll jump up on my chest
And when we lock eyes
there's so much love I wanna cry.”
But that was it for RHP. The turn of the century saw Kozelek make a solo break for it, releasing
Rock N Roll Singer. Fully embracing his love of cover versions and releasing his inner rock god, the album high points were lovingly crafted covers of three AC/DC tracks. This experiment was followed through to its natural conclusion with 2001’s release of
What’s Next to the Moon, a record consisting of beautifully re-imagined Bon Scott era AC/DC tracks.
Whether this was simply clearing the decks for the next phase in Kozelek’s career, an example of someone simply having fun with their career, or an avoidance of the personal is up for debate, it seems to be an aspect of his output that has stayed the course, and it should be welcomed. Kozelek himself has said these were easiest and most fun of his records to make.
In 2002, Kozelek formed Sun Kil Moon with long time bandmate Koutsos, Tim Mooney and Geoff Stanfield. Jerry Vessel also contributes. In a way, this was RHP in all but name. Throughout Kozelek’s career he has been the one to write the songs, produce, and direct the players – it’s only where he takes it from album to album that differs. So, Kozelek makes the point that it’s only the name that really changes; even the personnel pretty much stays the same.
But 2003’s Ghosts of the Great Highway is possibly the best of Kozelek’s career to date. It’s an expansive record, layered in desert dust, electric, countrified and simply terrific. This is the point where Kozelek adds people to the places he’s always written about. Three songs are named after boxers (he’s a fan) and one after Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton. This opening track, “Glenn Tipton”, veers from singing about boxers, movie stars and old school pop crooners to tales of death, murder and loss. The thunderous “Salvador Sanchez” is an album highlight, Kozelek singing of loss once more, but this time of the loss of a potentially great Mexican boxer:
“Salvador Sanchez arrived and vanished
Only twenty-three with so much speed
Owning the highway
Mexico City bred so many
But none quite like him sweet warrior
Pure magic matador.”
There are other songs of love and loss on this great album, with “Lily and Parrots” naked and forthright in the feelings it expresses:
“you are my love
i hold you above
everything and everyone
yeah everyone everyone.”
These songs are made all the more sad in retrospect due to the death of Katy, Kozelek’s muse, in 2003, lost to cancer at the age of 35. The songs on the album were written before her death, but Kozelek would address this later.
2005 saw the release of Tiny Cities, a covers record this time made entirely from Modest Mouse songs. While it’s an interesting record, it never really connects for me and seemed a stop-gap release. By this time, Kozelek had started his own record label, Calo Verde, and gave him the space and freedom to allow him to get such records out to the public.
As someone who has always written about sadness, loss, and love, Kozelek was never likely to shy away from facing up to the death of Katy. 2008’s April is the album that stands as a tribute to Katy. It’s an unflinching record that faces head-on the loss of a loved one, and Kozelek admits that he thinks of her every single day and finds memories of her on every street corner in San Francisco.
It’s not an album that I can say I “enjoy” as such, but the scope and ambition and love and passion that fills every note of every song is something to be admired and respected. It’s such a heavy – in the emotional sense – record, with only rare excursions into the full-band rock outs found on Ghosts. It opens with “Lost Verses”, and sets the tone perfectly:
“I see you well and clear
Deep in the moonlight dear
Your radiant august eyes
They are the suns that rise
They are the light that blinds
They end these lost verses.”
“Lucky Man” is a song that talks of many places, from Ohio to Spain, as if Kozelek is on a search for his lover, and ends with this:
“Woken up to this new April’s sleepy gray skies
The rain has swept the dust that left, the gutters rise
The fog it spills into the hills, crawling out East
The windows weep, beside me now though she sleeps and I
Now have I found her.”
Only to lose her, sadly. “Tonight the Sky” tells the story:
“I met my fallen Angel one last time
I promised always through me she would shine
I held her hands, I sunk into her heart
Til powers unrelenting, pulled us apart..... Tonight the skies
Are open for you
Mountains and big clouds
Divide us in two.”
It’s heartbreaking from start to end, but as Kozelek has said, “the timing was right”. It’s hard to put into words what Kozelek must have gone through to get this record out from his heart, but I can only admire him for making something which stands as a beautiful tribute to a lost love.
This brings us back to the beginning of this article. Admiral Fell Promises is a result of Mark Kozelek wanting to make a record where he sang and played as beautifully as he could. As a result, a full band sound might only have muddied the waters around him, so it was just Kozelek and his classical guitar. And what a treat that turned out to be. Each song becomes a virtuoso performance, resulting in numerous style and tempo changes – even within the same song. Again, places are to the fore, with “Alesund”, “Third and Seneca” and “Bay of Skulls” the standouts for me.
It’s much less heavy-going than April, and certainly doesn’t seem to be a particularly “sad” album. Who knows where next for Mark Kozelek? I think the song writing did keep him balanced in those early Red House Painters days, the palette got a little brighter when singing of loss and love through other people and other places, but Katy will always be with him in some form. Whether electric or folky, Kozelek is never dull, and as for whether he’s comfortable with where he is now, I’ll leave him with the last word:
“Is there anything else i could see myself doing? Not really. A few years ago, a girl in Ireland asked me. "Mark, what is your dream?" I just told her I was living it. It’s true. I'm basically living a very close version of what I was always working towards, so I can't complain.”
