New Music Tuesday - Sun Kil Moon

Sun Kil Moon - April

4.5 out of 5



I'm glad I'm married to my first love, because Sun Kil Moon's new album is going to turn you into a giant, emotional, blubbering mess of a human being reminiscing about yours. If the album is titled "April" in order to appropriate an overall theme, it isn't the April of sunny days of backyard baseball or sundresses and Easter. This is the April of "showers" fame, of walking down a chilly, wind-blown street, of sitting inside on a gray day with nothing to do but think about lost loves and the past. In fact, I'm not sure if Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon is little more than a stage name for Mark's solo work) knows how to write a song that isn't in the past-tense. If you are a nostalgic person at all, this album is your holy grail. Mark conjures images of friends and lovers, and shrouds them in idealism and longing. He does this atop a backdrop of the most trance inducing fingerpicked and/or fuzzy guitar until you are a part of his inward and backward looking world. If anyone knows and embraces his obsessive ability to dig up the past, its Kozelek, with lines like:


I have all these memories, I don't know what for.
I have them and I can't help it.
Some overflow and spill out like waves,
Some I will harbor for all of my days


Some part of me is amazed that he harbors any of his memories because he seems to tell a whole life in each song.


The album starts with a couple of distorted Neil Youngian epics (much in the same vein as his first SKM release, "Ghosts of the Great Highway"), "Lost Verses" and "The Light." They clock in at 9:43 and 7:50, respectively, but Mark finds a way to keep his songs from becoming exhaustive. If it is possible to be intricate and simple at the same time, that would describe his style. His music has many layers, whether from his intricate fingerpicking, layered solos, or vocals, but his songs are never hard to follow, as they were in his days as the leader of The Red House Painters. Once he finds some intricate pretty little thing, he plays it again and again, until it sounds so simple and so light. This is what leads to the meditative and lulling aura of this album. And just before a song starts to get too repetitive, he mixes it up, as he does in both "Lost Verses" and "Tonight in Bilbao," where at the end of the song he introduces a completely new beat and invigorated melody. These little shifts always come at just the right time, and breathe new life into a song you think you have figured out.


If the first two songs recall "Ghosts of the Great Highway," the rest of the CD is an amazing expansion on his latest CD, "Tiny Cities," both physically ("Tiny Cities" was barely a half hour long, while "April" is more than double that), and musically. The fingerpicking is incredible and moving. Songs like "Unlit Hallway" (which sounds beautiful with some vocals from Bonnie "Prince" Billy), "Tonight in Bilbao," and "Blue Orchids" demonstrate that Mark is still one of the most impressive and underrated guitar players around. The arpeggios in both the bridge and end of "Tonight in Bilbao" are mind-blowing, and in "Tonight the Sky" his solo noodles into fuzzy oblivion.


Despite all of the wonderful guitar and catching melodies, what really makes the album work is the way Mark Kozelek can spin a yarn. In the gorgeous song "Moorestown" he sings, as on most of the tracks, of a lost love. Obviously, this has been done before, but he has the ability to put you there, in the shoes of the protagonist, by using the starkest details while at the same time singing about somewhere that could be "Anytown, USA." "Her walls are Mediterranean blue/ Her baby sister picked the hue," against "We'd spend our days just driving round/ Old parking lots and neighborhoods/ Our framed and charming Moorestown."


I think time will tell if "April" will be as good as "Ghosts of the Great Highway," which I still consider to be Mark's finest work, because his music is enticing at first, but the more it's heard, the more it's understood and the finer it becomes. This is easily the best, most complete album I've heard this year, and I demand you pick it up. 74 minutes will never go by so fast again.

Buy it straight from Kozelek's

Caldo Verde Records (7.99 download)


Sun Kil Moon - Moorestown

New Music Tuesday - Counting Crows

Counting Crows - Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

4 out of 5 stars
Ok, so Tuesday is a little late this week, as Anne was out visiting. But I still managed to download and listen to this CD a few times since then. This is my most anticipated CD in years, and despite my obviously high expectations, it exceeded them! This is the first full length release from the Crows since Hard Candy back in 2002, so they've had more than enough time to work on this one.

The CD is a concept album of sorts, with the first half ("Saturday Nights") being hard rocking songs of partying, and the second half ("Sunday Nights") being the more somber, regretful day after. It's a great way to highlight the fact that the Crows even have hard-rockers, and of course the downtrodden songs are always lead singer Adam Duritz' forte.

The album starts with "1492," a song I'm pretty sure the Crows have been touring with for a few years, and I think they just finally found a home for it here. The guitars are wailing and the song is loud and immediate. It's definitely "Saturday Night," and it kicks the album into a stream of songs with loud, layered guitars, plenty of neat little licks, and wonderfully written songs. Adams voice sounds great on every song, and each song feels like the band is playing live-- they are filled with energy.

The last song of "Saturday Nights" is "Cowboys," the best song the Counting Crows have done since "Mr. Jones." The song is loud, immediate, filled with paranoia and despair, and catchy as hell. The "come on, come on" lyric from "Accidentally in Love," is back, but this time it is the flip side of love; it's the selfish need of love and attention. It's the song after one too many drinks, when you're starting let all your insecurities out and frankly, you're kind of scaring people. It's a great lead-in for Adam to start telling his Sunday morning stories.

The last half of the album has the Crows going very country, in the way they did on the album This Desert Life. More Americana or roots rock than Nashville, but the songs have plenty of slide guitar and banjo. The slow songs are more forgettable than the first half of the CD, but one of the highlights is "When I Dream of Michaelangelo." Adam steals a line from his "Angels of the Silences" from Recovering the Satellites to string a little song about faith and sex and God. Duritz evidently misinterpreted Michaelangelo's scene with God and Adam as not having just touched fingers, but as Adam not being able to actually touch God: "And he seems so close as he reaches out his hand/ But we are never quite as close as we are led to understand." If there is a better line about alienation from your creator, I haven't heard it. "On a Tuesday in Amsterdam Long Ago" Adam does his recquisite solo piano, horribly sad song ("Raining in Baltimore" on August and Everything After, "Colorblind" on This Desert Life). "Come back to me/come back to me" he croons, mournfully, over and over, and the song would be a little repetitive if it weren't for the emotional impact of Adam's voice. It's also got a great little line in there: "She is the film of a book of the story/ Of the smell of her hair." The album ends with a nice little song about getting dumped called "Come Around." It's sort of a happy song in disguise, as it's about a guy who is hard on his luck, but he is on his way back up.

Overall, the album does start to lag because of the slow/midtempo songs starting to back up, but this is a great CD for all Counting Crows fans and rock fans in general. It's not indie, but this isn't your standard pop either. The music is wonderfully made, lyrics full of emotion and story, and it sounds like a band having fun. Check it out.

Counting Crows Website


Counting Crows - Cowboys
Counting Crows - 1492

I guess the point is i really fucking love this album

Ok in the last blog i wrote i said i'd bought the new Kathleen Edwards album ' Asking for Flowers'. So i'll give a quick review for you all. The review is this BUY IT. Get over the fact that it's a girl singing. Get over the fact that she has a country twang to her and BUY this album.
I've been a fan of Kathleen Edwards since her first album 'Failer' came out in 2002. It was a great pissed of country album. She wrote great songs about drinking, bars, sex, drugs, loss. Now i know what your thinking. My baby took my dog i'm gonna drink and be a cowboy music is crap. It is. All of it. This is different. The reason is that Kathleen edwards is an incredible lyrisist. She tells these brief little stories and builds the songs around them. They're much more touching and emotionally powerful because of her abilities as a songwritter.
'Asking for Flowers' is a big shift from her first two albums. She's grown comfortable in her skin. While her second album 'Back to Me' was better then 'Failer' because it took the anger and sorrow up a notch, 'Flowers' is better then 'Back to Me' because it tones everything down and really looks inward. These songs are very personal. Specific moments in her life are laid out to pen a complete picture of Edwards' life.
Let's just take one line from the title song apart. This is a song about a woman in a long term relationship comming to terms with her lover not really loving her. Her life has been less then it could be because of this man. '' Asking for flowers, is like asking you to be nice. Don't tell me your to tired, ten years i've been working nights'' everything you need to know about that couple is right there in that line. Working class low income family. He's mean to her and doesn't buy her flowers, which is all she really wants from him. Yet she still wants to love him and again he pushes her away saying he's just to tired. All of this tied into a single line of her song.
The singer songwriter is the most self centered type of music. No matter what you do your paining a self portrait. People assume they know you by the way you come across in your songs. Nina Nastasia is a dark eyed lady of the night, Kristen Hersh is pretty fucking crazy, Joni Mitchell is much smarter and much sadder then anyone else on the planet. These are all stereotypes i get from listening to my favorite female singer songwritters. Kathleen Edwards is a girl who can drink you under the table, fuck your brains out, come home covered in dirt after being away for 4 days and who beats the shit and trashes the car of someone who does her wrong.
Ok this is getting all disjointed in long because i didn't prewrite and i'm at the library and can't listen to the person i'm talking baout. So i'll wrap it up.
This is a great album. Start to finish every song is solid and i haven't skipped a song. I've bought about 20 albums in the last month and this one is getting pretty much all of my time. Buy it, listen to it and love it.

Ok let's start

Ok not much time. I'm on my way home from work, but i did want to make a post to say that I am going to post.

So I've been buying a lot of music. Even for me. Yes, I did say buying. I'm rebuilding my CD collection from scratch. I've been getting 3 cds every 2 weeks, maybe more if I'm not spending my money on anything else. Today I bought Against Me- New wave The Headlights- Some Racing, Some Stopping and Kathleen Edwards - ( I forget the name but it has something to do with flowers). I love Kathleen Edwards and she's one of the few people I will buy a cd of the day it comes out without hearing anything about it. Her first 2 are grea Alt country and her writting gets better every album. Against me is an interesting pun-rock group who suddenlly got political. I didn't give it much of a listen, but i will tonight. The headlights are a lot like Saturday Looks Good to Me.....the cricket noise means nobody knows who that is. There Indie pop along the lines of belle and sebastian and architecture in helsinki.... more b & s though. Anyway I'll drop some reviews after i give them a few listens.

Anyway I have a lot I want to write about. I'm going to spend some time to night puting together a post and put it up tomorrow. Have fun everyone.

P.S. Yeah I can't wait for the new Sun Kill Moon....and who got you into them mike?

An iPod Diary

I recently connected my iPod to my computer for the first time in what has no doubt been nearly year. As such, the track count recorded by my mini is a close approximation of my most played tracks of 2007. The list is organized as the most played starting with Jack Johnson, which I wouldn't have expected but now I realize I do listen to that song kind of a lot. I was also amused by the clear distinction in tempo between the first 10 and the other 10. I underestimated the psychoanalytical potential of this post.

There were two songs I couldn't find on imeem so they got the boot: "Maybe you can owe me" by Architecture in Helsinki and "The Calendar Girl" by Stars. One album that didn't crack the top 20 but dominated the next group was Yann Tiersen's soundtrack to "Amelie."



John will post eventually, right?