Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood

Sun Kil Moon - Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood
Critic Score
Based on 15 reviews
2017 Ratings: #849 / 940
User Score
Based on 377 ratings
2017 Rank: #273
Liked by 25 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

80
Loud and Quiet

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.

76
Paste

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.

71
GIGsoup

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.

70
Drowned in Sound

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.

70
AllMusic
At over two hours long, it's easily one of Mark Kozelek's most ambitious undertakings yet -- or one of the most self-indulgent, depending on the listener's perspective.
70
Rolling Stone
Taking its place alongside recent work-in-progress-style releases by Kanye and Kendrick, it's an epic for our unfiltered moment.
66
Sputnikmusic
As a writer of the English language, Kozelek gets perfect marks; as a writer of songs, the jury is still out.
65
Pitchfork

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.

60
No Ripcord

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.

55
Northern Transmissions

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.

50
Consequence of Sound

The double album concept only waters down Kozelek’s biting social commentary and exquisite observations on living.

50
Exclaim!

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.

40
Tiny Mix Tapes

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.

BradTasteMusic
85

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

Tielur
93

Nobody:
Mark Kozelek: SO LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHING

Toasterqueen12
95

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

vinylmeister
70

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

Jlepileo03
88

I did think that 'Benji' was a tad more emotionally captivating, but the instrumentation and flow of this album is also really fantastic.

FunkyBlood9696
85

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

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Added on: July 20, 2016