Bill Ellison
SUN KIL MOON
The first words Mark Kozelek sings on the new Sun Kil Moon album, Benji, are "Carissa, when I first saw you, you were a lovely child. And the last time I saw you, you were 15 and pregnant and running wild." His voice is meek and graceful, downcast and bare, within a verdant basin of guitar sounds. The song, like the album, continues to unveil in Kozelek's semiautobiographical stream of melanchonsciousness. Carissa, it turns out, is Kozelek's second cousin. In the 20 years since he's seen her, she settled in their native Ohio as a nurse, a wife, and a mother of two. Kozelek is on his way to her funeral. She died from an aerosol can exploding while she was burning trash. Two songs later, "Truck Driver" is about Kozelek's uncle, who died in a similar way. It's odd, and sad, but he honors it, singing, "Third-degree burns, a charred up shovel near his hand. My uncle died a respected man." Benji is simple and magnificent. Kozelek has become an American Nick Drake. The album is like that shoebox full of Polaroids you find under someone's bed. Someone who's not here anymore. You sit there for hours, planted in the images, in the blurred, awkward expressions and lifelines. They're perfectly imperfect. You look out the window. Branches of an elm wave slightly in the breeze. You call someone you love. You are here –> X. Kozelek spoke from his home in San Francisco.
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