The New Classics is a reoccurring segment in which we examine our favorite indie releases that are bound to replace our parent’s “classic rock” stash hidden in the attic or the basement. These aren’t reviews, these are uneditied testimonies and opinions about why we love what we love. Can we get a witness?

Words by Christopher Carosi

Album: Ghosts of the Great Highway
Artist: Sun Kil Moon
Released: 11/4/2003
Label: Jetset (Re-released on Caldo Verde)
Produced by: Mark Kozelek

So in celebration of Mark Kozelek’s fourth release as Sun Kil Moon, Admiral Fell Promises, I present this humble & dynamic “review” of one of my favorite albums ever. I just arrived back in Pittsburgh (my hometown) from San Francisco (my current place of residence), where I find myself listening to Kozelek’s music again… where I first discovered it. Seeing as he himself formed both the revered Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon in San Francisco, it’s a fucked up world we’re livin’ in. Maybe it’s just me. Actually, it is just me. Come with me.

Mark Kozelek and his brethren understand the sounds of the guitar. He may not be the best or most dynamic player, but he certainly has a developed understanding of the emotional depth of that instrument, and his vocal style is singular and capable of calming, beautiful melodies. And although his lyric skims right up against stuffy sentimentality, his voice and emotion in the lyric are more than honest, and the performance is a very consoling experience. Kozelek is also skilled at using the different songs as pieces to a big, big whole. In this way, the lyrics work together to capture a very full and well-crafted experience. He published a book of his lyrics going back to Red House Painters. Well, there you go. Yeah, I bought the thing.

So, in the event that his playing and singing are conceived as less than perfect (which just ha-ha-happened), the character of the player in these songs comes across as such, and that is appealing to this listener. From a heartbroken point of view, this is a fundamental American songwriting quality, er… thing, er… doo-hickey. It’s as old as blues and country, the first American song-forms, in which the character in the song, the performer, acknowledges his/her problems, and by doing so, can rise above them. I’m certianly not saying this album is bluesy, nor am I willing to go as far as pretending to be an expert (because I am pure hack status) BUT it’s something to think about.

AND to go further on a tangent, I’ve always thought of Mark Kozelek in the same sphere as Neil Young. They both are guitar nerds. Acoustically: beautiful, heart-breaking stuff. Electrically: meandering, loud and sloppy. Both are painfully honest songwriters, both have worn flannel without question, both have gone through Scorcese-like cocaine abuse (alright, not THAT bad), and both have their own particular falsetto… so the comparison is there. In that way, I think of Mark Kozelek’s Sun Kil Moon stuff as an extension of his long career, in much the same way as Neil Young sung O Canada! with Buffalo Springfield, with CSY, with Crazy Horse, and as himself. What a badass.

Oh yeah, the album.

“Glenn Tipton” has a stranglehold on your ear immediately – the guitar is so elegant and immediate and deceptively simple. The lyric is strange, “Cassius Clay was hit more than Sonny Liston / Some like K.K. Downing more than Glenn Tipton / Some like Jim Nabors, some Bobby Vinton, I like ‘em all.” Tell me, Mark, what the fuck am I to do with that? The first line obviously is a strange little-known-fact about the famous prizefight in which Cassius Clay won his first heavyweight championship. It strikes a chord with that underdog, bluesy-ish mentality I went on about above. It seems to support Liston though, because Clay is famous for being a winner and Liston is famous for being a loser. The line about Downing and Tipton is squarely Kozelek’s personal life (he loves hair metal). And with Nabors/Vinton, he doesn’t pick favorites among them.

From the beginning, with the intimate singing and playing going on, the listening experience is one of uncontrived emotion, and that is captivating shit. I remember a quote somewhere from someone who said that solo albums should be like the performer whispering their secrets into your ear. Secrets scare me and I have trouble keeping them secret, but this motherfucker is comfortable enough.

In that same song, at the flick of a guitar, Kozelek whispers his like for old movies with Clark Gable (“just like my dad did”). He goes into his hometown a bit too, singing about a woman who ran the local donut shop and died (“place ain’t the same no more”). The song shifts dramatically in the song where he sings, “I buried my first victim when I was nineteen / Went through her bedroom and the pockets of her jeans / And found her letters that said so many things that really hurt me bad.” There’s a devious and thin line between metaphor and confessionalism that Kozelek is playing with here, and that’s so awesome.

Througout the album, the treatment of percussion and electric guitars is so tasteful and effortless. “Carry Me Ohio” has an irresistable ringing electric rhythm with a backdrop of soft snare and a droopy bass line. The production is so warm and it has signficant body coming out of your skull candies. These songs seem longer than their running time, which I think is because of the very repetitive qualities of the songs, nice slow choruses and verses, with repeated melodies. The artistry in Kozelek’s singing ability is how elastic the language is to his vocal, in which a rising and falling melodious phrase is unchanged with different words, and done so quite well.

“Salvador Sanchez” has Crazy Horse written all over it. It has that mountain of grunge sound, a victorious riff that’s fucking loud. It’s broken up with crashing drums and Kozelek’s clear vocal, “Salvador Sanchez / Arrived and vanished / Only twenty-three / With so much speed / Owning the highway”. It’s a youthful and energetic introduction, banging along through Mexico City, Los Rios, and the Phillippines. The guitar solo (again, very Crazy Horse-like) is grinding, way too high in its register, played with speed with the hands close together, prying the guitar strings. The mix in this song is rich with MORE guitar layering, but this song isn’t about rage. It’s about seeking daylight, or better, having daylight and never wanting to let it go.

“Pancho Villa”, which is a reread later in the album of the same song but done only with acoustic instruments, has just as much power. This proves that the emotional landscape being painted in an album is more important than one particular song. Suck on that, record company fucks (Oh, you’re not reading this, I forgot). It’s also important as an example of Kozelek’s craft, in which his ideas are complete and the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.

The backbreaker, the song that can split bottles and remove skirts, is “Duk Koo Kim”. It’s presented to you on a platter way at the end of Side B, just before an instrumental track called “Si Paloma” and the reprise of “Salvador Sanchez” I just mentioned. It starts with a muffled guitar, gorgeous and stationary. Drums arise in the back of the mix and a counterpoint guitar is pulled in there. That calms you down, puts a hand on your back. The song itself is 14 minutes, which Neil Young is nodding his head to. To me, It’s a song about bitterness, being unable to remove oneself from a heavy situation. If I know Mark Kozelek like I think I do (which I probably don’t), he’s talking about walking away and spitting on the ground, out the door. What’s hard is acknowledging the time put in to something really really difficult and long (a relation… ship, wow that sucked, sorry).

Anyway, the song changes thrice, from the searching at the beginning to the yearning for a return to younger years. A delighful classical guitar line lives here… which could signify memory. The song seems to stop completely (now we’re well over 9 minutes). Everything breaks down and rises up with a handful of guitars, one electric that noodles through, “Walk with me down these strange streets / How have we come to be here / So kind are all these people / How have we come to know them”. There so much to listen to, and so much TIME to do so. It’s a great song.

Ghosts of the Great Highway is a world. It has a very complete and crafted narrative space, where the listener is approached with differing aspects of the same idea: humans arranged in varying detail in the vast space of our world, acknowledging failure’s power as not being more significant as success and THEN losing. Kozelek is simply one voice in that world, and he doesn’t attempt to solve anything in particular, and can only understand what he believes is the truth, where he’s been, what’s he’s experienced. Well goddamn. The follow-up album to this, in a brilliant move, is Tiny Cities, an entire album of Modest Mouse covers. The idea of loneliness and vast, Western space, is explored through a much different lens. If we’re talking Mouse, I can assure you it’s a very nihilistic lens. However, Kozelek reinterupts the songs with his singular sound, and unearths some pretty painful and obvious emotion at work. With Tiny Cities, Ghosts of the Great Highway is even more fantastic.

I’d like to give it a ridiculous grade. 10 out of 10 Neil Young digitally-removed cocaine mustaches. There!

Buy it @Insound

Filed under: New Classics, Not Blake, Jim, or Brendan