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Sun Kil Moon - April
| Avclub |
| After spending a good portion of the '90s writing beautiful songs with Red House Painters, Mark Kozelek has made some interesting career choices, most notably devoting entire albums to AC/DC and Modest Mouse covers. Granted, Kozelek's drastically reworked versions come out sounding like his own songs, but it means that albums of original material have gone from special to momentous occasions. April, his third full-length under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, and the first made up of new songs since 2003, easily bears the weight of expectations, proving once again that he really does transcend any slowcore or singer-songwriter tags that have been tossed his way. Lyrically, memories of growing up in Ohio in "Lucky Man" and the bittersweet love story laid out in "Moorestown" find Kozelek in fine reflective form, and musically, he couldn't sound freer, moving from quiet solo ballads to string-filled dreaminess to full-band rock songs that remain gentle under the distortion....full text |
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| Allmusic |
| Despite the change in his band's name from Red House Painters to Sun Kil Moon, songwriter Mark Kozelek has changed very little in the past decade-and-a-half. Sure there was a left turn when he did a rather unorthodox (to say the least) album of covers of Modest Mouse tunes, but he recorded those songs as if they were his own and performed them like that as well. There are forces at work in Kozelek's own songs that follow like a ghost train from one destination to the next. April is no different. Memory is the fossil fuel that drives his creativity unhurriedly along a rather labyrinthine maze to the same place: wherever he is, he wishes he were somewhere else. But it's also the acceptance of that fact that makes these songs what they are. His touch on the guitar varies. In its trademark loping, ever-so-slowly unfolding of a ten-minute narrative like "Lost Verses," it's a blend of acoustic and electric guitars, and he hovers around the same three chords like it's a mantra as his words come from some place caught between the depths and instructional truth revealed over time, and the immediate wince of powerful emotions. It's a tension, but one that is not unbearable or taut....full text |
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| Sputnikmusic |
| Sun Kil Moon's 'April' is clearly a landmark record for principle member Mark Kozelek as well as the year 2008. Where 'Ghosts of the Great Highway' used childhood memories and old boxing heroes to define Kozelek's confessions it seems like with 'April' he has retreated back to his honestly bare beginnings. Musically, this is definitely the most varied Sun Kil Moon record, lots of electric guitars as well as guest vocalists and an obvious debt to Neil Young. The most common complaint that has been addressed in criticism of 'April' is the length of the record. Certainly an hour and ten minute plus run time isn't something to simply scoff at but Kozelek's classic records have always been marred by their seemingly ridiculous lengths....full text |
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