There's something about Oregon Winters, how bleak the days can be, the afternoons lazily going by, and getting used to the endless variety of cloud cover, be it white or cream-colored, that makes me think about Sun Kil Moon. There is something in the voice of Sun Kil Moon lead singer Mark Kozelek that seems to hit me with a stormy sense of arrival, the way it washes over my ears, and how sometimes his voice seems almost comically one-dimensional, and others it hits the way that you feel, just nails it, and you have thoughts in your head since you last got out of that Leonard Cohen phase. And there are whole corners of people in the world that never listen to this stuff, because it’s too melancholic?The first few times I put the record on, it seemed too much for me to judge in one sitting. I wanted time with this. The second time I put the record on, it didn’t fare well. The sun was out, maybe for the first time this year, a lick of warmth of Summer in a cold Spring, but then that guitar on “The Light” hit me, and there I was, the two of us, in bed, right before it happened, and next thing I knew I was taken off to a better place.The next time I only thought about it as an entity, how sound waves reverberating off of a wall constitute one hell of a thing, and this record was now becoming a challenge to review. The truth was I couldn’t find anything to call it, anything to compare it to, but this huge empty white canvas on my computer monitor and the words that couldn’t describe the sounds being wrung from this disc with my heavy hands.Part of the blame lies on the creator Mark Kozelek, as he doesn’t write typical songs. You listen to Mark Kozelek for where he takes you, the atmosphere. There are common markers for the faithful: sunny days take a back seat to gray ones, there are gusts of wind in his songs, and torrents of sea spray abound. His last record under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, 2003’s “Ghosts of a Great Highway” was a flight through the stratosphere, where time unfolded slowly with great effort and focus, as we waited for one thing that was slowly revealed musically, and whether it was a turn of phrase, a melody or swelling guitar solo, it made the listening so rewarding that it made it well worth the wait.So his new album, “April” then, deals in similar atmospherics to its predecessor, and it often feels like music that one could surrender to completely, as one surrenders to the voice of a favorite author or a mad proclivity. For this record Kozelek slows down a bit, letting many of the songs luxuriate into the seven minute mark, which makes it even easer to block out all other senses and just listen and wait for a slow realization to hit. Maybe at the time I’m falling in or out of love, maybe I’m watching someone I love suffer greatly. It might be too late to save my marriage, your marriage, but during one listen we will be transcended, disappointed, inspired, dispirited, taken in on a very personal journey. For this is music to have epiphanies to, music for reflective times, as Sun Kil Moon, really just Kozelek, set up atmospheres where you will want to linger in for multiple listens. You may not always be in the mood for it, but if the timing is right, and you are in the coast of your mind with waves crashing and your whole landscape continually changing, you will be rewarded. Sometimes when I listened, I wanted to warn all of you. “Reader take heed.” I wanted to say. For just as too much naval gazing can cause self-obsession, you might find that time spent with this record is akin to time spent too focused on one painful event, as the record at times does, and you get swept up in the undertow. Much of the record goes by slowly, with the clouds forming into a fine sketch of someone’s face, like a forgotten moment in third grade pulled out of a memory and digested. The record then picks up speed with Crazy Horse-inspired “Tonight the Sky”. This shuffling, catapulting rocker holds us down to earth as the storm pulls on our kite, the lightening and thunder in his voice guiding us through the storm, leaving us soaking wet and compelled. Mark Kozelek has taken great care to construct the cliffs that overlook the hill, places meticulously drawn out of his breath that immediately wraps the listener into this world. The feeling that it was all too much faded as I stretched out into “Tonight in Bilbao.” For these songs are like viewpoints on cliffs and I am in these places on the cliffs, watching the clouds go by, watching all of this nature swim up around me. And I feel like I am truly living inside of these songs.Bonnie Prince Billy makes an appearance on a few tracks, and both of their voices when taken together, while hymn-ally hypnotic, occasionally act as too much filler, more dumpling than broth, and threaten to bloat what is by most accounts a perfect cement to bury these corpses of American legends. For this is a grand album, one not capable of fully figuring out in one sitting, but two weeks later when the record had already hit stores, and people were waiting for the review, and in six months time this will all make sense to me, my bearings complete and comfortable in their newfound chaos. It will be fully enjoyed at a time where you either fell in our out of love, or just want a comfortable spot to watch the wreckage slide into the ocean.Because in the end this record sets up for me a Mount Rushmore of melancholy, with Mark Eitzel from American Music Club, Mark Kozelek from Sun Kil Moon and Bonnie Prince Billy chiseled out and perched over the crashing waves of Big Sur, just to let that be an example for the rest of us.
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