the Color of Context

“A lot of the songs I write are very personal and introspective. But others are observational. I wrote a song recently about my cat … I was down in Mexico and I was missing my cat, so I wrote a song. That one, obviously, would have to be considered very personal.”

¾ Mark Kozelek, in a 1998 interview for The Press, in Atlantic City

Does a song have to be long to express longing? In this case, yes, it does, because this particular kind of longing¾ the Mark Kozelek kind¾ is one that lingers over a lifetime besotted with regret, long-lost friends, and the death of loved ones. Part of him wishes to return to childhood innocence, the other tries to move forward, and the tension in between creates a space where Kozelek can dwell, in more ways than one. His is a tale of love lost and spiritual renewal, told against the well-lit backdrop of his vast classic rock collection. In the past, Kozelek, formerly of Red House Painters, currently of Sun Kil Moon, has earned critical acclaim interpreting the likes of rockers who would surely be found in that collection: Neil Diamond, John Denver, Kiss, Yes, and AC/DC. (“Kozelek doesn’t cover tunes,” wrote one reviewer for the Winnipeg Sun, “he recovers them.”) Three years ago, he started his own label, Caldo Verde, so he could release an entire album of Modest Mouse covers, which other record companies refused to touch. But for all his recognition as a cover artist, his own songs, with such heart and sincerity, are that much more emotionally wrenching. “A lot of the songs I write are very personal and introspective,” he has said. Indeed, his pain and his solace shine through in descriptions of sunlit meadows and starry skies almost as poignantly as he must have felt them. The hypnotic reprisals echo back a longing and desire that is as massive as the song lengths themselves. And as the mood begins to set, we can see why some of his tracks verge on 10 minutes long. In any case, a man obsessed does not pen three-minute ditties.

Sun Kil Moon is an interesting hybrid of genres, marked by the extended guitar riffs of progressive rock, and inlaid with the prettiness of folk melodies and provocative lyrical poetry. Imagine Elliott Smith with an electric guitar. Or Nick Drake on a musical dirge: Pink Moon meets Pink Floyd. A lot of ink has been spilled to describe Kozelek’s classic rock roots, and in another era, he may have ranked among his idols. His songs are every bit as epic, albeit not as loud. But for all the vast-sweeping requiems, the real passion is in the details: his father’s wool coat, his mother’s perfume, his girlfriend’s blue fingernail polish, the skyline at daybreak, a lavender meadow, the color of the walls in the hospital room where a loved one lies dying. At times, the imagery is so powerfully effective it can be overwhelming. Some might call this overreaching. But do we really want him to pull back? Desire never does and, let’s face it, that’s a good thing. Something needs to get us out of bed in the morning, after all.

It’s tempting to take the symbols in Kozelek’s songs and spin them into some half-baked biography. Ultimately, the lyrics hint at his past, but their meaning is left for him alone to fully understand. “Tonight the Sky” is arguably the best of the album and, at more than 10 minutes, definitively the longest. He needs time to work out his rage and frustration at the loss of a loved one whose memory apparently still haunts him at night. “I woke up every morning, not believing she’d be gone,” he sings, as if suffering from short-term memory disorder a la Memento. Somewhere amidst the crescendoing guitar riffs and the downright poetic imagery of “oceans and full moons,” Kozelek’s soul is bared: “I loved you like no other/ Your eyes I can’t erase/ Your voice, it wakes me always/ Pouring down from space/ Like warm sun rays.” In the album’s near 10-minute opening, “Lost Verses,” he croons about slipping out from beneath a girlfriend’s warm sheets on a rainy October night to stare up at the sky and ruminate on the shapes and shadows of the past. The melody unfolds slowly, repetitiously, just like those childhood memories of his, remembered. Early morning daydreams give way to “The Light,” at 8 minutes long: “The night lit by moon/ The day by sun/ Oh baby I’m wondering how come/ The light is nearly gone?” Perhaps it’s fitting that Kozelek named a track for the light, since it’s such an important character, appearing and reappearing in nearly every song. Loved ones have passed and childhood friends have grown up and moved away, but he can always count on the sun to kill the moon with every dawn.

I sat outside as I listened to this album. As the saying goes, March has left like a lamb, and the month for which this album is named has brought us warmer weather and sunnier skies. Yet, the air is still cool, and I started to compare the music to a chill breeze¾ ephemeral, but cutting. Because for all the maudlin and melancholy atmosphere, April is the kind of album that gets under your goose bump- dimpled skin and makes you feel alive. And that’s worth waking up for.