release date: Feb. 17, 2017
format: digital (16 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,62]
producer: Mark Kozelek
label: Rough Trade Records - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "God Bless Ohio" (4 / 5) - 2. "Chili Lemon Peanuts" - 3. "Philadelphia Cop" - 4. "The Highway Song" - 8. "Butch Lullaby" - 9. "Stranger Than Paradise" - 11. "Bergen to Trondheim" - 12. "I Love Portugal" - 16. "I Love You Forever and Beyond Eternity"
8th studio album by Sun Kil Moon is, in CD and vinyl formats, a double album issued on Caldo Verde with a total of 16 tracks and a running time of monstrous 2 hours and 10 minutes. As a digital release only, the album is released on Rough Trade. The album follows the same recipe as Sun Kil Moon's most recent solo, the 1½-year-old Universal Themes (Jun. 2015) - following closely in the wake of the critically acclaimed Benji from 2014 - with Kozelek as songwriter, composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist alongside ex-Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley as only other musician. The most release featuring Kozelek is the collaboration-project Jesu / Sun Kil Moon (Jan. 2016).
The shortest track runs more than 5 minutes, three tracks exceed 10 minutes, and the majority are somewhere between 7 and 9 minutes. It's a rather different collection of songs by that alone, but the individual compositions are also of different nature. Some tracks - the best to my ears - are reminiscent of older Kozelek releases, where you find clear verses, choruses and Kozelek both singing and handling acoustic guitar. More demanding tracks include Kozelek's spoken word passages on which he appears to be reciting from a diary, he rants about masturbation, he argues with a music journalist about which Bowie songs are the best and how he came to know about Bowie's death, or he goes on about mass shootings, etc., as for example on "Philadelphia Cop", which nevertheless has a certain strength once you get 3-4 minutes into the almost 11 minutes of the composition.
In terms of style and on the surface it comes much as usual in an alt. folk and singer / songwriter setting, but you also find various elements from other styles that Kozelek is influenced by. We hear traces of hip-hop, funk, indie rock, punk rock, and passages with spoken word, where Kozelek opens up about something sounding as an endless reading from his own diary. It's basically The Fall, Hüsker Dü, Pixies, Mark Eitzel, Arcade Fire, Johnny Cash, and many more - in the same pot, and without being completely structureless, but let's just conclude by saying it presents natural challenges from a listener's perspective.
Common as Light and Love... is a strong album and one of Kozelek's better. There are flaws, peculiar passages and unconventional structures, but overall, it's mostly a joy where you may encounter fun detours, weird existences and slightly hidden beauty.
Recommended.
