Sun Kil Moon...Ghosts Of The Great Highway
(2003, Jetset Records, TWA 53)
Sun Kil Moon mastermind Mark Kozelek kicks off the album Ghosts Of The Great Highway with a boxing reference. "Cassius Clay", he says, "was hated more than Sonny Liston". This he states matter-of- factly, as if it's a foregone conclusion. Then he moves into more subjective territory, allowing that some like Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing more than his Priest co-hort Glenn Tipton, and that, among those with a preference, Jim Nabors is sometimes favoured over Bobby Vinton.
Boxing legends, heavy metal axemen and easy-listening music crooners...what in the world do they have in common?
Kozelek fills us in..."I like 'em all," he sings.
And that's Mark Kozelek for you. An enigmatic, mixed-bag of a songwriter who is impossible to pin down. Just when you think he's perfected slo-core mope-rock with the Red House Painters he throws out Songs From A Blue Guitar, basically a solo album (none of the other RHP members were involved) and featuring an extremely repetitive distortion drenched droner, "Make Like Paper", which would have sounded perfectly at home on the loudest Neil Young/Crazy Horse LP never released. On that same album he managed to throw in references to Young's "Cortez The Killer" and Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in a lengthy cover of Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs" that bore even less resemblance to the original than Johnny Cash's reworking of "Rusty Cage" did to Soundgarden's blueprint. And if that weren't enough to convince you that Kozelek was out to confound his core audience, perhaps the head-bangin', fist-pumpin' version of Yes' "Long Distance Runaround" will do? Or maybe the gorgeous version of The Cars' "All Mixed Up" that makes the original sound contrived, turning it into a genuinely passionate, heart- rending ballad...
Kozelek followed Songs For A Blue Guitar with another Red House Painters album (this one featuring all but one original member), the bittersweet Old Ramon. Then he dropped two solo EPs (one of which consisted entirely of old Bon Scott- era AC/DC songs re-cast as tender folkie ballads...did I mention that Kozelek has a knack for absurdity?) and a lackluster but well-intentioned limited edition live LP (White Christmas Live).
So I wouldn't blame those RHP fans who fell in love with their first self- titled album (aka Rollercoaster) for maybe feeling like Kozelek had alienated himself somewhat from the very ones who put him on the map, as it were. After all, it's a long way from the dulcet tones of "Grace Cathedral Park" to the stripped-down starkness of his arrangement of "If You Want Blood".
But somehow I doubt that he lost too many true believers, because with the exception of his beautifully poetic lyrics, the man's greatest asset is his voice, pure, crystalline and melancholic. It's the kind of voice that bleeds passion, that exudes feeling, that sometimes, when it hits you just right, is almost cruel in it's ability to pierce through the hardened heart to elicit emotions not generally shared with everyone. Private sentiment, sheltered and barricaded, seeps through like blood on a thin white sheet at the sound of Mark Kozelek's singing.
Would it surprise you to know that Kozelek, he of the beguiling, angelic voice and intimate, sonnet-like lyrics, is a hardcore boxing fan?
Indeed, he is, and that brings us back to Ghosts Of The Great Highway, his most recent album using the moniker of Sun Kil Moon (though it features ex-members of Red House Painters, Black Lab & American Music Club, most Kozelek devotees focus primarily on his contribution, since all songs were written and arranged by him and his signature is stamped upon every moment).
The album references professional boxers in no less than 4 of it's most powerful songs, including the opener, "Glenn Tipton". It's a subdued introduction to an album that covers quite a bit of stylistic territory...an acoustic number remeniscent of the late John Denver's early work, but with a bizarre lyrical twist---after lamenting a lost father and a late friend, waxing poetic on the inevitability of change, the narrator goes on to confess, "I buried my first victim when I was nineteen, went through her bedroom and the pockets of her jeans". There, he says, "(I) found her letters that said so many things that really hurt me bad." And even though he insists that he's "never breathed her name again", he still concedes, "I like to dream about what could have been"... "Sunshine On My Shoulder" this AIN'T!
"Glenn Tipton" is actually a logical choice to begin this album, as it most resembles the solo work Kozelek has done on his Badman Recordings projects Rock And Roll Singer and What's Next To The Moon, more or less providing a sense of closure to that aspect of his work, at least at this point in time, clearing the way for the more lush soundscapes that follow.
Long-time Red House Painters fans who pine for the melancholy arpeggios of their seminal albums will likely think their wish has been granted with the subdued "Carry Me Ohio". Indeed, this is the closest to the formative "RHP sound" Kozelek has come since his departure from the 4AD label. Melodically simple, the intensity builds throughout the song with the addition of more instruments and more distortion (though distortion, as it is used here, is anything but noisy).
"Carry Me Ohio" is a love song that acknowledges a potential soulmate but bemoans a state of affairs that seems to sabotage any attempt to reciprocate affection, for whatever reason. "Sorry that I could never love you back, I could never care enough in these last days", Kozelek apologizes, while at the same time offering up the admission, "Can't count all the lovers I've burned through, so why do I still burn for you? I can't say". The chorus is a prayer to "heal her soul, and carry her my angel, Ohio", sung in a lilting falsetto that sends shivers down the spine. Glockenspiel and guitar bell-tones waft through the song like a soft breeze on calm waters. It's a mournful affair that longs for "words long gone" and "the star I just don't see anymore", but it's obvious that the real loss is the ability to love and to allow oneself to be loved in return...
The tranquility, however, is shattered with the sound of loud electric guitars as the next song, "Salvador Sanchez", blares from the speakers. Sorry, old-school RHP fans, but the nostalgia was short-lived. And as far as I'm concerned that's just fine, because "Salvador Sanchez" is one of the most moving and powerful songs Mark Kozelek has ever written and recorded. Once again he has channeled Neil Young & Crazy Horse with uncanny success in this loping peon to Latin American boxers who "fell by leather, all alone but bound together". Now I don't pretend to know the slightest thing about boxing and it's colourful history, but this song makes the subject seem so alluring that I'm almost tempted to delve into it.
Kozelek describes the song's namesake as a "sweet warrior, pure magic matador". He then proceeds to sing of several other fighters, including Pancho Villa and Gozo of the Phillipines (who I personally had never heard of until now, but no doubt they are long lost kings of "the Ring"). One he describes as "crying for suns lost on distant shores" until his opponent "struck him, delivered him". You can almost see the blood flying in a black-and-white slow motion instant replay.
The grunge of "Salvador Sanchez" fades out and gives way to a series of three delicate, pastoral pieces that benefit from lovely, unobtrusive string arrangements. "Last Tide"/"Floating" and "Gentle Moon" are the kind of songs that sound as if they were written especially to showcase the fragile, lovelorn quality of Kozelek's voice. He's proven many times in the past that he's capable of writing incredibly poetic lyrics, and the words to "Last Tide" are likely no exception, but his diction is so slurred here, almost mumbled, that they are barely decipherable. You'd think that would be a drawback, but no, it adds an elusive charm to the number (much like early R.E.M. and everything by Sigur Ros, you find yourself so caught up in the music that you don't even really care what the words are, or if it even has "real words").
When "Last Tide" segues into "Floating" the lyrics become more audible, but they're more or less just a repeated mantra of "Come to me my love, One more night, Come on" with a few variations. Still, it winds things down sweetly and leaves the listener wanting more of the same...
Which is exactly what you get. "Gentle Moon", like "Last Tide", is enhanced by a string quartet and delicate acoustic guitar picking, with a chiming, minimalistic electric guitar ringing a two-note pattern that adds a shimmering radiance throughout. The lyrics are mumbled again, quite difficult to decipher except in the chorus: "Our souls escape fire, they rise higher...Gentle moon, find them soon". I'm guilty of using the adjective "beautiful" way too much when I try to describe music that affects me like this does, but what else can I say? "Beautiful" fits "Gentle Moon" to a tee.
The seventh track on the album, "Lily And Parrots", is the weakest, in my humble opinion, though I've read that the label was pushing it as a potential single when the album first came out around this time last year, with indie radio play and all. Perhaps it's my own personal taste that keeps me from appreciating the tune, but the hard rock stylings just don't ring true and sound completely out of place in the grand scheme of the album. I've listened to Ghosts Of The Great Highway at least a hundred times since it was released and I can honestly say that I've skipped over "Lily And Parrots" at least 90% of the time. And the thing is, it's NOT a bad song...there's an acoustic version tacked on at the end of White Christmas Live, as a bonus track, and it's quite nice actually. But the arrangement here sinks it.
Once again I must reiterate that this is my own personal opinion of the song...I've read many people praising it as one of Kozelek's best "rockers" on fan websites and e- mail groups. Needless to say, I disagree...I've also read reviews that pan "Salvador Sanchez" as the album's low point, and that just confounds me cuz it's the song I always crank up and sing along with. Different strokes, indeed.
Then again maybe another reason I skip "Lily And Parrots" is because by this time I'm ready to experience the centerpiece of Ghosts Of The Great Highway, the sprawling 14-minute epic "Duk Koo Kim".
The song is yet another ode to a prizefighter, this time an elegy to Korean contender Duk Koo Kim, who was killed by blows sustained in a boxing match with Ray Mancini (by the way, Mancini himself has been the subject of his own song, "'Boom Boom' Mancini" by Warren Zevon, which also mentions Duk Koo Kim). But to be honest, it's not really so much about Duk Koo Kim as it is a reflection on immortality and the love that allows us to face the inevitable, that we come to need every bit as much as the air we breathe.
Kozelek sings of watching a film of the Mancini/Kim fight and being deeply touched by the sight of the "boy from Seoul" laying alone in the square, "without face, without crown". "The angel who looked upon", he observes, "never came down". The sheer intensity of such a moment causes him to consider the seeming randomness of death, and he muses, "You never know what day could pick you... out of the air, out of nowhere".
Earlier in the song he sang of being woken from a dream the same night as he watched the fight film. It's not apparent if this sleep followed or preceeded the images of Duk Koo Kim's fatal loss, which he's witnessed on the screen. The dreams (or is it a single dream?) do seem inspired by something disturbing. In them he watches a typhoon from the roof of his house, "bringing the clouds down to the sea, making the world look gray and alone, taking all light from view". He also dreams of being "lost in war", unable to feel his feet or hands, knowing that he was dying, "but an angel came down", he says, "and brought me back to you". The same angel, perhaps, who looked upon the broken body of Duk Koo Kim, but chose not to descend for him.
It just seems to me that the tragedy of Duk Koo Kim is the inspiration for these reflections on death and how the Grim Reaper could care less about his victim's ambitions, aspirations or anything else he might have going for himself in life. And in the face of all these hard thoughts Kozelek comes around to a simple invocation, "Come to me once more my love, show me love I've never known...sing to me once more my love, words from your younger years"...
I've never been all that good at discerning the "meaning" of a song, and the interpretations that I've just shared may be wildly off the mark (pardon the pun), but then again, I'm not sure that it matters whether or not I really "get" it, because what I DO "get" is a flood of feeling as I listen to "Duk Koo Kim", and that's really what music is primarilly about, isn't it?
It took several hearings before the song really sank in for me, and I'm sure it's sheer length will be daunting to some, but there is no doubt in my mind that "Duk Koo Kim" is the awesome highlight of Ghosts Of The Great Highway. There's really no way to adequately follow it, but there are two more tracks left, and in their own way they underscore the impact of all that came before them.
"Si Paloma" is an instrumental track with a Latin American feel that sort of breezes along like a soft afterglow. Then the album concludes with "Pancho Villa", which is nothing more than "Salvador Sanchez" stolen from Crazy Horse and re-cast into a setting more akin to "Last Tide" and "Gentle Moon". It's a bit disarming when you first realize that it's the same song, because the arrangement totally alters the feel, but Mark Kozelek has been doing this ever since the beginning of his career with his own material ("Mistress", "New Jersey", "Have You Forgotten") and with others' work (Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am A Rock", the batch of AC/DC covers and even Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner"). This tactic, for the most part, has yielded striking results, and "Pancho Villa" is no exception. It reminds you of all that came before it and makes you want to listen again.
And so, as Sun Kil Moon, Mark Kozelek has outdone himself. All that there is to love in his work with Red House Painters as well as his solo efforts are here in abundance, along with something extra...something I can't quite describe, but which takes his music to a new level. I'm still not sure what any of it has to do with ghosts or a "great highway", but I do know this: Ghosts Of The Great Highway has proven to be the perfect soundtrack for those long road trips I've frequently embarked upon in the last year since I've had this album, so maybe it has something to do with that?
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