Sun Kil Moon
“Micheline”
Benji (out Feb 11 on Caldo Verde)
This has been out since late last year, but I still wanted to re-visit it, as we are only one week away from the release of Mark Kozelek’s triumphant, Benji. The 47 year-old is one of music’s finest storytellers, struggling to find meaning in the average lives of the people who have flitted in and out of Kozelek’s life.
On the crushingly beautiful “Micheline,” Kozelek fixes his gaze on three very different people: a developmentally disabled childhood neighbor, a high-school friend who “had an awkward way of playing barre chords,” and, finally, his grandmother. Though he doesn’t embellish or sugarcoat, he paints his subjects with dignity, humanity, and honesty, searching for the hearts of their stories and the things that make them special. February 11th cannot come soon enough.
