When Mark Kozelek arrives, baby, he arrives.
The longevity of ‘Common As Light…’ may make it a challenge to navigate initially, but with each sitting the album grows more personal, and feels like the natural progression from last year’s Jesu collaboration.
This is ultimately a record about the limitless ways human beings will find to make sense of and talk about the weirdness of our everyday lives.
Devoting time to ‘Common as Light’ is worth the effort in most part. There are still the familiarly macabre scenes in abundance and an obsession with boxing. Sun Kil Moon assumes the role of elder statesman to review modern America and in turn himself – his role in modernity.
There’s no doubt that Kozelek has changed, and for much of Common As Light… his ramblings and sonic backdrop are gripping. Unfortunately, there are many moments when that rambling seems aimless. The good news for fans of Kozelek’s work in its current iteration is that there will be no shortage of worldly events for him to contend with for future projects.
The reason why similarly quotidian story-songs like “Gustavo” or “Jim Wise” hit so hard was because they resulted in double portraits: You learned more about Kozelek through his observations of others. On Common as Light, Kozelek fills the whole frame, increasing the humor and anger, but sacrificing the subtlety.
Not even Kozelek can command it entirely for 130 minutes, though, and when you’ve already achieved perfection just three years previously, it’s always going to be hard to reach those heights again.
Kozelek is probing towards something, some sort of feeling that he can’t quite hit. The failure is admirable at points, fitting in well with Kozelek’s aging sentimentality. But released as a double album, with 16 songs total, it begins to crack in places, and ultimately, starts to sound a bit dull.
The double album concept only waters down Kozelek’s biting social commentary and exquisite observations on living.
For those who have been enjoying his stream-of-consciousness lyrical style and day-in-the-life ramblings — even as they stray further and further from what could be described as music — his latest record offers the most exhaustive (and exhausting) probe yet into his life and mind.
Kozelek spends a lot of time on Common as Light giving us his broadly “common sense” liberal pluralist live-and-let-live shtick, punctuated by grumpy bashings of “hipster” culture and its parades of regenerated tenement buildings and juice bars, music journalists, and Father John Misty.
what are you critics smoking?
This album in terms of quality is like a 97/100 for me, which is why it was my second favorite album of 2017. I even said in my video I knew I would probably never come back to this thing. I did come back but I just cant stay. Because of that I am reducing 6 points. my initial listen was really important
I think it's just a fact that I have to accept that every Sun Kil Moon album will be better than the last for me. This is my third time with one and they just keep getting better and better.
Today on Sun Kil Moon: Mark discovers the concept of death and loneliness and doesn't know what to do with the information. It's a strange reaction to have. I've heard albums about death that use sorrow and I've heard albums that use it as a celebration of life. I've never heard an album that looks at ... read more
Considering how many absurd stories and ideas make it onto this record I do wish I liked it more. It's really good, but not quite as intimate and raw as Benji or Admiral Fell Promises. While sarcastic Mark can be entertaining, I prefer the heavier, emotional stuff from him personally. Still, I totally get the hype for this thing
I did think that 'Benji' was a tad more emotionally captivating, but the instrumentation and flow of this album is also really fantastic.
Yeah, this was one of the most challenging and stretched out albums I have heard in my entire goddamn life, but it was also pretty experimental in a lot of ways that I haven't seen done before
On this album Mark Kozelek threw a lot of caution to the wind and recorded 2 hours worth of ramblings, random tangents, social commentary, as well as morbid stories he found interesting, and it's all backed up by the slowest instrumentals imaginable, but miraculously, it all becomes a stunning formula ... read more
1 | God Bless Ohio 10:36 | 92 |
2 | Chili Lemon Peanuts 8:58 | 85 |
3 | Philadelphia Cop 10:47 | 85 |
4 | The Highway Song 7:54 | 82 |
5 | Lone Star 9:13 | 80 |
6 | Window Sash Weights 6:29 | 85 |
7 | Sarah Lawrence College Song 5:13 | 78 |
8 | Butch Lullaby 8:33 | 80 |
9 | Stranger Than Paradise 12:23 | 81 |
10 | Early June Blues 7:16 | 82 |
11 | Bergen to Trondheim 7:59 | 85 |
12 | I Love Portugal 7:58 | 84 |
13 | Bastille Day 5:38 | 81 |
14 | Vague Rock Song 7:08 | 74 |
15 | Seventies TV Show Theme Song 7:29 | 84 |
16 | I Love You Forever and Beyond Eternity 6:13 | 83 |
#5 | / | The Needle Drop |
#28 | / | Earbuddy |