Early in the song, he receives a
piece of ambient music from Justin
but I haven't listened to it yet
Dropped some film off to be developed
that I'm hoping could be right for Jesu/Sun Kil Moon album art.
He is referring to Justin Broadrick, his British collaborator, and the album they made together and that you are now hearing. Later in the song, Koz finally
listens to the ambient piece of music that Justin sent, and its beautiful
I'm going to add vocals to it on Saturday
the day before I leave for Israel.
More events unfold. As the song closes, Koz lies next to his girlfriend:
Hey, I'm 48, and I'm healthy and happy
and both my mom and dad are still alive
and I can see the bridge twinkling like gold out my window . . . .
Everything I have been through
has led me to this beautiful piece of music that I'm listening to
while I'm laying in bed next to
Beautiful You
This metaphysical songwriting, circling back to the ambient music now pouring through your speakers too, is another unique progression in Koz's diaristic narratives, which find a happy home among Broadrick's soundscapes. (As the story goes, Isaac Brock was impressed enough with the track, he told Koz that he should just release the lengthy number as the entire album. Brock provides backing vocals during the song's chorus).
Mark's stream-of-consciousness storytelling illuminates his 2016 collaboration with Jesu, which is Broadrick's moniker under which the critically-acclaimed metalhead explores shoegaze guitars, metallic synthesizers, and ambient drones, allowing him to branch out into various sonic spaces. Broadrick's instrumental beds are an inviting landing place for Koz's vocal workouts, providing a range of stylistic opportunities from industrial guitar squalls to pretty synth runs. Like Koz's superb collaborations with Jimmy LaValle (The Album Leaf) and Desertshore, this pairing produces intriguing results.
The song's subjects, as usual, are as varied as Koz's moods. He frets over the meaning of the word "rekindle," which he heard in a recent documentary film ("Good Morning My Love,"), he frets over a squabble with his girlfriend while reading John Connolly's crime novel ("A Song of Shadows"), he frets over criticisms of his music and ends up reading a fan letter from Singapore ("Last Night I Rocked the Room Like Elvis And Had Them Laughing Like Richard Pryor"), he frets about his father's health and happiness and juxtaposes it with his own chances of fatherhood ("Father's Day"). Amid the fretting, Koz's self-deprecation aims to discover just what makes him happy and sad, and it is the quotidian that draws his keenest observations, as the abstract has no place in a world that is rushing at him with tangible evidence of both the magical and mundane.
It wouldn't be a Sun Kil Moon record without ruminations over death. On "Exodus," Koz reaches out to "all bereaved parents" who have lost children. The song is deeply sincere and sad, set against drifting pianos and synths, and it has become a cathartic sing-along at recent live shows. Named after Mike Tyson's late daughter and inspired by the tragic death of Nick Cave's 15-year old son (who accidentally fell to his death at an England seaside cliff) the song seeks connection through shared grief, another empathetic entry in a catalog filled with emotional stunners.
On "Fragile," easily one of the year's most impressive feats of lyricism, Koz weaves together the death of his childhood friend Christopher in working class Ohio, the recent death of Yes bassist Chris Squire, and Koz's recent cover of Yes' "Onward" for the Italian film Youth. He finds connective tissues between all of these events: from listening to Yes' records as a teenager to seeing Yes in concert in San Francisco to covering Yes for Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino. As if this weren't heady enough, Will Oldham provides backing vocals with lyrics from, what else, Yes' love song "Onward." Under the power of Koz's graceful nylon string guitar, the track is a strange revelation of sorts, and more evidence that he is one of our most gifted songwriters.
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