Catching up with Mark Kozelek.
Mark Kozelek is not known for holding back. On “Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood,” the latest album by his band Sun Kil Moon, the San Francisco singer-songwriter unloads 130 minutes of improvised new material, most of it jarringly delivered with the accompaniment of synthesizers and rapping. It’s a far cry from the outfit’s early material, which, like Kozelek’s previous band Red House Painters, was carried by intricate guitar work and elemental beauty. He’s gained some attention for his feuds in recent years, but he remains a singular artist.
Q: The songs on “Common as Light” sound so spontaneous. Do you know what you’re going to write about before you start recording or is it all straight off the top of your head? A: From “Universal Themes” (in 2015) and onward, the music was recorded with no preconceived ideas or direction as to where the music would go. So “off the top of my head” would be accurate. Q: Does it make it hard to perform them live? A: It makes it very hard for me to play an instrument live. As all of the music was cut from improvisation, I’m pretty deep into two new albums at the moment, so it’s hard for me to put time aside and figure out what I was playing on those past albums. I hire others to take care of the music. It’s one less thing for me to deal with on the road. Q: Has the relationship between you and the audience changed now that you operate without a filter? A: The relationship is just growing stronger. Fans really seem to be connecting. I’m meeting people who are naming their children after my songs — and even their pets! Q: Does music feel more disposable to you at 50 than it did at 25? A: Of course it is. Anything that is available for free is disposable. Plus, people don’t have the attention spans they had 20 or more years ago. People now have many distractions if a piece of music doesn’t move them in the first 10 seconds. Q: Your album, which was recorded last year, predicted a Trump win. How did you know? A: When people are getting hit by cars chasing Pokémon, you’re not going to end up with a very sophisticated president. And when you’re hating on someone, you’re promoting them. All of that hatred for Trump boomeranged back into everyone’s face. Q: Musically, why have you stripped your sound down so much? A: I remember a Tupac quote: “I don’t have the mother — time and the mother — luxury to spend this much mother — time on one mother — song.” Sure, I could have spent the next two years doing overdubs on “Common as Light,” but the record makes its point and creatively I needed to move on. Q: There’s a lot of ’90s nostalgia in the air — would you consider revisiting Red House Painters? A: I’ve never been one to conform with what’s in trend. I respect artists’ decisions to go play albums from two decades ago and to reunite, but that chapter of my life is over, and I’ve moved on.