Do I Detect The Hint Of A Smile? : A Review Of Sun Kil Moon's "Among The Leaves"

Some of his fans will be angry. Mark Kozelek’s latest album under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, recently-released Among The Leaves, sees Kozelek keeping his now ubiquitous nylon-string guitar and Spanish-derived picking patterns (with the obvious exception of “King Fish”), but exchanging his trademark melancholy—indeed, his morose depression—for some humor and warmth. Kozelek’s entire discography, from his early work with Red House Painters to his quirky releases under his own name to his recent work as Sun Kil Moon, has dipped deep in the wells of sadness and anger, only ever occasionally lightened by a burst of sunshine, as in “Michigan” off Red House Painters’ Old Ramon or “You Are My Sun” off Sun Kil Moon’s Admiral Fell Promises.

Among The Leaves, however, shines with evidence of warmth, humor, and a surprising lack of pathos. Of course, long-time fans will find their share of depression and angst among these 17 songs; I suspect Kozelek would have a tough time trying to craft an album this long (which clocks in, by the way, at over an hour) without an ounce of sadness. A fan of Kozelek’s past work myself, I will admit that the prospect of him mining a humorous, less depressing vein frightened me.

After all, one of the things I admired about his work—“Heron Blue,” “Glenn Tipton,” and “Have You Forgotten,” to name a few favorites—was how readily he is willing to tackle the ugly stuff. The verse about Eleanor in “Glenn Tipton,” about the death of an old woman, who ran a coffee shop and served police officers burning the midnight oil, mixes an episode of sadness with deep personal insight. His calm, thoughtful stance on sad topics was something that I always admired. Even though a full album of his music tends to send me off into a downward spiral of sad thoughts, he manages the neat feat of combining all this sadness with a hopeful eye and a forward-looking spirit.

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But enough about Kozelek’s past work. Our concern here is the recent Among The Leaves, whether or not it is actually “humorous” and whether or not that humor works. As it turns out (breathe a sigh of relief, fans), a lot of the humor is glancing; it’s the quirky details that tickle his fancy the most. There is nothing here that could even loosely termed a novelty song. A look at the track-listing gives a quick overview of his general comedic sensibility. With song titles as long, in some cases, as those in Sufjan Stevens’s belabored and abandoned ‘States Project’ (“A Conjunction of Drones…,” etc.), including “I Know It’s Pathetic But That Was the Greatest Night of My Life,” “Not Much Rhymes With Everything’s Awesome At All Times,” and the mega-mouthful “The Moderately Talented Yet Attractive Young Woman vs. The Exceptionally Talented Yet Not So Attractive Middle Aged Man,” it is clear that the album's humor won't be the kind to slap us upside the head.

The other moments of humor are often equally subdued, such as the track sequencing of “Track Number 8” (which I hopefully mistook as a train track number out of respect for Kozelek’s usual attention to detail). As it turns out, the song’s title and final track sequence are a joke built into the song itself: “Well, I wrote this one and I know it ain’t great / We’ll probably sequence it track number eight.” At another point in the song, Kozelek explains that there are often not more than ten songs on most albums (having knowingly set it at Track 11 on this one), because “it’s a chore / to write half a dozen, some guys lay back / and rest on their laurels like lazy, old hacks.” It’s a bit awkward but still revelatory to hear Kozelek exercising such clear self-deprecation; he’s willing, with a sly wink, to acknowledge that this  album is at least partly the work of a "lazy, old hack." 

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Most of these songs read like diary entries—not the tortured diary entries of songs like “Heron Blue”—but often accumulations of daily observations, such as the travelogue "UK Blues." But Kozelek's loose lyrical attitude on this album is best captured by the first track, “I Know It’s Pathetic…,” which describes a romantic encounter in Kozelek’s green room after a show: “her eyes trailed off / to bottles and objects around the room / my backup guitar, a tray of food.” 

Most importantly, the humor of some of these songs and their overall effect—meaning the absence of an emotional wallop to the degree of “Carry Me Ohio”—forces one to question what is valuable about Kozelek’s music. Throughout his career, critics and listeners have been putting his lyrics in the spotlight. Sure, he has an ear for arrangements, some decent guitar-picking skills, and a keen sense of subtle melody, but the lyrics have always received the lion's share of attention. I've felt much the same way. For that reason, in previous records, it’s been hard to tease out exactly how much I appreciate those other aspects of his work. With his music paired to less-substantial lyrics, the rest of his talent is allowed to shine.

My chief complaint about Sun Kil Moon’s last album, the mournful Admiral Fell Promises, was its utter lack of aural diversity. I’m sure that Kozelek is a master in concert (I’ve never seen him), but the live, solo arrangement of the album treated his material unfairly; its sheer uniformity, just Kozelek and his nylon-string guitar, played distinctly to its disadvantage. For me, this fifth album under the Sun Kil Moon moniker was set up to be a deal-breaker; Kozelek could not continue in the unadorned vein and maintain my admiration. Thankfully, Kozelek has eased the "solo" experience with occasional percussion, harmony lines, some strings, and even artful touches like the pinging xylophone in “Sunshine In Chicago.” Of course, he maintains the solo aesthetic on many of the tracks, but the inclusion of further instrumentation lifts a huge burden off the listener.

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The question still remains: what is the value of this album? How should it be weighed against the rest of his discography? Personally, I’ve decided to consider it not so much as an album proper as a collection of rejects and misfits, as other critics have also done. However, it's important to note that these songs are not rejects in the traditional sense. These songs are not worse than his other work; they’re simply different. It's not that they didn't make the cut on a certain album; it's that they were never even written for any of his past albums.


Unlike much of his other work, these songs provide us with a look into Kozelek’s day-to-day experience, especially his life out on the road. Usually, his songs are slaved over; you know from a single listen of “Katy Song” that it was not written in a five-minute burst of creativity. Some of the songs on Among The Leaves, however, clearly were. There are childish rhymes and silly wordings that wouldn’t have even made it through the doorframe of a studio on other Kozelek albums. These songs are the odds and ends that would fascinate a Kozelek biographer (I assume some hardcore hipster out there is already well ahead of me on that one…), providing an essential avenue of inquiry into his lyrical process. 

What all this is meant to say is that some fans will hate this album because it’s by Kozelek and other fans will love it for the same reason. If you’re not already a fan—don’t bother. Start with something else, something more brooding and 'slowcore.' I’ve linked “Grace Cathedral Park," from Red House Painters I, below. When you make your way around to Among The Leaves, you'll be in for a pleasant surprise.