After Red House Painters burnt out in 2001, Mark Kozelek has been very productive in his Sun Kil Moon guise. With his band of compadres he adopts a schlock and awe approach. Do not be off-put by the rather disturbing fascination with The Partridge Family. The streets he walks are not laid out with lily pads. You realise this very quickly after listening to ‘This Is Not Possible’, a song which equates Berlin, the band not the city, with raging teenage lust and asks whether the President should be institutionalised. The answer is correct, this is possible. So take a breath, recompose and recommence trawling through various stylistic incongruities.
The Sun Kil Moon manifesto is one for angular obscurity with a certain cerebral whimsy. Delivered with such a deadpan manner, Kozelek sounds like he has lost the pan, this deeply personal record contains many challenges and disturbing elements. Somehow it also instils sparkling colour into the playful doom.
Absorbed in songs as effective and simple as ‘This Is My Dinner’ and ‘Candles’, it’s hard to correlate these with ‘David Cassidy’ and The Partridge Family’s ‘Come On Get Happy’ or ‘Rock’n’Roll Singer’ by AC/DC. But with a sense of satire, Kozelek champions life’s dark horses in the knowledge that the cash cow will never be run down.
Join Kozelek on the tour bus of This Is My Dinner for an experience like Jonathan Richman swathed in velvet.
9/10
