3. April / Sun Kil Moon

Mark Kozelak, formerly of the Red House Painters, continues to explore the haunting, the beautiful, and the elegiac. April is a sophisticated and subtle record that beguiles with each new listen, revealing itself slowly and unfolding texture after texture of musical possibility and meaning. Where Ghosts of the Great Highway is rich, evocative, and nostalgic, the shimmering tapestries of an Ohio fall, April is a hazy, meandering meditation of memory, demanding a patient introspection, a walk through the low-hanging clouds of spring. Yet, like Ghosts, the music’s quiet familiarity moves listeners to contemplate their own solitude, even if such revelations take them to another time, another place.

Kozalek’s signature voice, rising over layered and intricate classical-guitar arrangements or open electric tunings, has become as rich and varied as his songwriting. “Lost Verses” is a stunning album-opener, a ten-minute acoustic masterpiece that builds to chill-inducing crescendos. It is arguably Kozelak’s most beautiful song from a catalog of beautiful songs, recalling a love for family and friends.

Watch over loved ones and old friends
I see them through their living room windows
Shaken by fear and worries
I want them to know how I love them so

“Moorestown” remembers a first love, and the journey to regain what could have been.

I cannot bear to wonder now
If the cascading soft lights
Are glowing for us in Moorestown
Are glowing for us in Moorestown

“Harper Road” draws out roadside memories in acoustic moonlight shadows; “Tonight in Bilbao” follows a musician’s slow dark wave cresting across Europe; and “Blue Orchids” closes the album by way of a lovely requiem.

One critic observed that Kozelak will write his way through memory and fate through the end of his days. His Ohio childhood, his classic-rock album collection, his guitar, his friends and especially the death of loved ones. Indeed, Kozelak takes solace in the beautiful landscapes that surround him. He travels to faraway cities and dreams of home, and then he comes home and dreams of elsewhere. Here is hoping that we keep losing ourselves in the music of those dreams.