release date: May 5, 2017
format: digital (9 x File, MP3)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,55]
producer: Mark Kozelek & Justin Broadrick
label: Caldo Verde - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "You Are Me and I Am You" - 3. "Needles Disney" - 4. "The Greatest Conversation Ever in the History of the Universe" - 5. "He's Bad" - 6. "Bombs" - 7. "Twenty Something"
2nd collaborative work by electronic artist Jesu (aka Justin Broadrick) and alt. folk artist Mark Kozelek released on Kozelek's label Caldo Verde. The first album by these two isn't much more than the year old album Jesu / Sun Kil Moon (Jan. 2016).
Stylewise, this is not just a second chapter to his joint-productions with Broadrick as this appears more in line with some of Kozelek's other recent releases, which means without electric and / or rock-instrumentation as backing, as was the case with the Jesu / Sun Kil Moon album. Instead, this turns out like another chapter to Kozelek's improv-sounding and spoken-word-like progressive experimental and long sessions about everything and nothing - and mostly: small dairy-snippets from recent impressions of ordinary lived life and small conflicts with people he meets on any random day in his everyday life. And yes I know, some would say it's ramblings, or they would describe it as babbling along. Anyway, to me it's both, meaning sometimes I get why people have negative feelings about it, and then, at other times I'm equally entertained. Musically, this album is more like subdued electronic / experimental backing music by Jesu. Mark Kozelek has recently excelled in this type of spoken-word compositions on solo releases either using his name, Mark Kozelek, e.g. on Night Talks (ep) (Mar. 2017), and on solo releases as Sun Kil Moon, e.g. on Universal Themes (Jun. 2015) as well as on his most recent Sun Kil Moon album Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood (Feb. 2017). In that sense, this one sounds more than a new chapter to that as opposed to a natural follow-up to his and Broadrick's first collaboration album - there's just a longer distance to that.
Regardless, if Kozelek issues music in his own name, as Sun Kil Moon, or he invites someone else in as collaborator, the end-result comes close to something installed and directed by Mark Kozelek. Track #4 and #5 here are the album's highlights and they both follow a pattern in Kozelek's artistic progression where he dwelves on story-telling in a progressive set-up of sorts, arrangements where the backing instrumentation works as sound tapestry, and when it really works, it comes out as a fascinating synergy. The downside is twofold: it sounds similar, and sometimes much alike other fine tracks, and often it doen't really work, but there are always these glimpses of 'whoah! That's just gooood.' Pure sunbeams.
I find that this is easily bettering their first album out where Broadrick perhaps brought some original remains of alt. rock and industrial rock to the table that I didn't enjoy in the company of Kozelek.
This ain't bad. It may not be great, but there's definitely more to it than what first meets the ears, and if granted attention, it's funny, entertaining, and really off but in that non-politically correct way of intentionally who gives a f*c# anyway!
[ 👍allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, PopMatters 3 / 5 stars ]
