Sun Kil Moon - Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood 4xLP

Label: Caldo Verde

Our Review:

After dissolving Red House Painters, singer/songwriter Mark Kozelek resurfaced in 2002 with Sun Kil Moon, refining his acoustic balladry and confessional lyricism. Sun Kil Moon's ambitious double-album, Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood, maintains Kozelek's stream-of-consciousness style of songwriting with a few notable detours, at least in terms of content. Since the 2010 album Benji and through Universal Themes from 2015, Kozelek has steered the poetry of his lyrics away from the plumbed depths of a world-weary romantic towards sardonic observations, with these tribulations becoming damning epithets at the turn of a quick phrase. Kozelek's declarations that lead up to the release of Common As Light (with many of these themes spilling into the songs themselves) set him up as a polarizing character in the public eye. It's almost inevitable that this stance is by design, even if he's harvesting his honest reactions. There's his disdain for Twitter and his animus for those who only pine for his early recordings; and these are just two of the targets of his gall. As much as he celebrates one perceived virtue and denigrates one perceived vice, Kozelek is very much the product of self-absorption that he so often rails against. It makes for a complicated, complex exploration of the self here on Common As Light. Kozelek nakedly spills his lyrical soup through his inimitable hushed hymnal voice onto Sun Kil Moon's unadorned indie-folk arrangements that profess a surprisingly bold use of electronic sequencing. Kozelek deliberated held back the vinyl edition of this album by three or four months, meaning that his fans who patiently awaited this 4xLP opus probably already passed judgement on Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood.