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ALBUM REVIEW: "Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood" by Sun Kil Moon

   Mark Kozelek's 2014 Sun Kil Moon album Benji is one of the most raw and vulnerable albums you will ever hear, an album that sits in your stomach and follows you around relentlessly. The Sun Kil Moon moniker has always been a place in which Kozelek has vented about intensely personal problems and issues, and Benji presented these in almost uncomfortable realism. Unfortunately the albums since then haven't quite reached the depths of Benji. Common As Light... bucks that trend with an album that expands on everything Kozelek forged in Benji. Kozelek's music has always been fiercely intimate, but he has tended to hide behind this a lot in his music, but he managed to peer past the facade on Benji and manages to do so again on Common As Light..., and it is this that raises the album to the heights of Benji.
   It is an entirely different animal to Benji, however; at 2 hours and 10 minutes it is twice as long and therefore is a much more emotionally complex album. Some may find this exhausting, others incredibly rewarding. Kozelek also managed to write an album that becomes steadily more meta as it goes on (just listen to "Vague Rock Song" and "Seventies TV Show Theme Song"), something only hinted at in previous material. Instrumentally, it is a much more diverse album, mixing folk, indie rock, post rock and even hip hop, and Kozelek slides from spoken word to singing to yelling and screaming with ease and poise. The signature sadness that has come to be expected from Sun Kil Moon is still very much present, but feels more grounded in reality, amidst other swirling emotions of everyday life. It ebbs and flows with authenticity and confronting realism in a way Benji never quite achieved and feels more or less like an expansion on everything great about that album. As I mentioned before, though, it never feels like I straightforward re-tread; it adventures to new places rarely if ever seen in Kozelek’s music before and makes them feel exciting and fresh, but pleasantly familiar, too.
   Highly recommended.

   Favourite Tracks: God Bless Ohio, The Highway Song and Bastille Day

   Least Favourite Track: I Love Portugal

   Rating: A



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