release date Mar. 1, 2019
format: digital (7 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,55]
producer: Mark Kozelek
label: Caldo Verde Records - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Coyote" - 2. "Day in America" - 4. "Cows" - 6. "Couch Potato" - 7. "Bay of Kotor"
10th studio album by Sun Kil Moon following only 4 months after This Is My Dinner (Nov. 2018) may only consist of seven compositions but it has also been issued as a double CD album (not yet on vinyl) with a total running time of 1½ hours (89 mins).
The album features music written by Kozelek with music composed by Kozelek with jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin and drummer Jim White - Kozelek himself is credited on guitar and bass.
At a first listen, the album may seem like a second chapter to his most recent album from Nov. 2018 but this is comes out as simpler - I guess, naturally, given the fewer musicians - and more coherently sticking to a particular theme or idea, which I think, lifts this in terms of listening quality. I like the stronger jazz-feel that sweeps through all compositions and give colour and tone to Kozelek's narratives, which here is executed with more focus on sound, as yet another instrument, and as opposed to his more recent releases where you'll likely find it easier to follow a narrative. Regardless the fact that there's also a sense of improvisations at stake, it never spins off, as I felt it sometimes did on the predecessor, on the other hand the music here often takes form as repetitive patterns that succeed as a kind of meditative state.
The album was generally met by negative and luke-warm response, and my guess is that many wish he would make music as he did a decade earlier.
Recommended.
[ 👎allmusic.com 2,5 / 5, 😞Pitchfork 3,2 / 10, 👍Needledrop 7 / 10, New Noise 4 / 5 stars ]
