Album of the Week: Sun Kil Moon- April

I spent a good deal of my early romance with music seeking out very specific kinds of music. I had a certain sound or style that I heard in my head and I couldn't rest until I found a band like it. But now that I've been listening to music "seriously" for a decade, I find myself more open to letting things come to me as they will. I go to the library and get an album by so-and-so because the name sounds familiar from a review or recommendation of a friend. Or I buy an album I know almost nothing about based on the cover or the group's name or the record label or something else, so I experience it with little or no expectations. And in this process of equally seeking out music as I let it discover me, I often find that I'm experiencing and enjoying music I never knew I wanted or never thought I would enjoy.

Sun Kil Moon is a band that I never thought I would enjoy because, on paper, there's nothing special going on. It's very deliberate music, existing in that sadcore/slowcore sub-sub-genre between indie rock and folk/singer/songwriter, recalling both the introspective rock of the third Velvet Underground album and the sad-but-not-depressing folk of Nick Drake. I love this style of music but I find it hard to get excited about. It's kind of like how the other day at the library I got the new Indiana Jones movie and Gus Van Sant's Gerry, one a fun action movie and the other a meditative, naturalistic film where two guys wander through beautiful southwestern/western scenery for what feels like two hours and not much happens. I would say that I enjoyed Indiana Jones more, whatever 'enjoyed' means in this context, but I found Gerry much more rewarding. There's more to think about with it; more new experiences; more to remember. This is exactly how I feel about April: it's not an album I expect to force on other people and I'll probably never cherrypick songs from it for mix tapes. Yet listening to it for almost a month now, off and on, I find it so much more rewarding and meaningful than most of the music I've heard this year.

April contains the kind of music you have to give yourself over to completely. It's made for overcast gray afternoons when you're too tired, bored, or depressed to get up, so you just lay on the floor or couch with the album on repeat. The songs sketch amazingly cinematic scenes of lonely introspection or dreamlike love. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these songs are like short stories or films, succinct but full of rich, imaginative detail. And again I will admit that, on paper, April doesn't look appealing because the songs are long and the album goes on for 77-some minutes. But once you're in the sweep of the thing, it's irresistible. Though April sounds nothing like them, its songs have the same peculiar ability that 'Like A Rolling Stone', 'Stairway To Heaven', and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' have, to be long but never feel long, to never overstay their welcome. Sure, they're repetitive, but ask any fan of electronic music about repetition: there's good repetition and then there's bad repetition. What, to one listener, seems boring will seem hypnotic and entrancing to another.

What makes the album so good, then?? Well, there are astonishing moments of pure delight on April. 'Tonight In Bilbao' chimes along for eight minutes before the song switches a gear for the last minute-and-a-half with a delicately plucked guitar melody. The album opens strongly with 'Lost Verses', which sounds a bit like Led Zeppelin's 'That's The Way', letting you know right away what a gorgeous, singular voice Mark Kozelek has...and then the full on guitar jam kicks in. 'Like The River', a duet with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, is every bit as lovely as you might imagine. 'Tonight The Sky' splits the difference between Neil Young's 'Down By The River' and The Velvet Underground's 'Some Kinda Love', particularly the lengthy guitar workouts of the live versions of both. And 'Heron Blue' has beautiful acoustic guitar solos that remind one of classical music.

Certain music can hold you transfixed, unable or at least unwilling to turn it off until it's finished. This is the kind of power April has over me. I listen to a lot of music and a lot of different music, so it takes something really special to stick with me for as long as this album has. I have to confess that normally after I write a review of something I move onto something else right away. But I still want to listen to this album some more. It's the sort of sleeper release that'll show up on end-of-the-year 'best of' lists but still won't get the attention and sales it deserves just by its very nature. You'll see it stocked at Best Buy or your local record store and vaguely recall reading something about it but you'll put it back in favor of something else. Maybe you'll get around to it in a few months. Or a few years. Sun Kil Moon, and Mark Kozelek's work in general, is the kind of stuff you can spend a lifetime putting off in favor of other things. But whenever you manage it, April will be waiting for you, ready to hold you in its spell.