Sun Kil Moon
Ghosts of the Great Highway
Century Media

The first thing to hit you when you first slip on Ghosts of the Great Highway is that it’s dripping with life, and it possibly comes as quite a shock. At least it did to me. After all, as the main man of Red House Painters, Mark Kozelek always stripped his music back to morbid proportions, rarely letting it rise above a plod. Even when he was taking on the music of AC/DC and Kiss, the songs became unmistakably Kozelek as they drained themselves of all pace. It’s always handy to have such an instantly recognizable trademark of course, and over the years Red House Painters maintained a steady following because of it.

Sun Kil Moon is surprising, though, because it just enters the game from the wrong side of the field and immediately sets about changing all of the stereotypical Kozelek rules you’d expect. The basics do remain the same - the gentle, emotional wrought vocals, and to an extent the pace of the songs, but yes, there’s definitely something fresh at work. Perhaps it’s the musicians he’s surrounding himself with. Anthony Koutsos was already part of the Red House Painters team, but newly introduced is Tim Mooney from American Music Club and George Stanley, and together they just seem to add new depth of layers to the typical Kozelek sound. The result is a collection of songs which vibrates more vividly, rewarding the listener and making you want to listen to it again, not just when you are seeking something depressing.

The inclusion of a string section for the recordings also adds an extra glow to tracks like ‘Last Tide’, making it even sweeter and more delicate, possibly more than Kozelek ever has been in the past. Then there is ‘Duk Koo Kim’, which is a 14-minute epic, just managing to maintain listener attention due to it sounding immensely pretty, followed by the equally exotic and beautiful ‘Si, Paloma’. Hell, the band even manages to rock out a bit on ‘Lily and Parrots’. I didn’t see that coming. With such a prominent market currently for alt-country artists, it’s a good time to be Mark Kozelek and it’s a better time to be in Sun Kil Moon.

Steven McCarron

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