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 American singer-songwriter and musician MARK KOZELEK returns to Australia this month on the back of his latest album under the SUN KIL MOON moniker, April. TOPHER HEALY engages with the one-time RED HOUSE PAINTERS frontman in a discussion about artistic change, getting older and the sometimes workaday nature of the professional musician.
To say that Mark Kolzelek’s music inspires passionate fans would be something of an understatement. Since his 1989 Red House Painters debut, Down Colorful Hill, the Ohio-born artist has beguiled a succession of converts with his intensely personal and evocative songs – a catalogue of often plaintive and minimal celebrations of love, loss, time and place, and the fragility of contentment. Blessed with a deep, somnolent voice and an ear for subtle melody, he has also applied his talents to unique re-imaginings of songs by artists as diverse as AC/DC (2001’s What’s Next To The Moon, under his own name) and Modest Mouse (2005’s Tiny Cities, as Sun Kil Moon). In between his musical outings he has managed to squeeze in some acting, most notably for friend Cameron Crowe in Almost Famous and Vanilla Sky; start his own label – Calo Verde, home to Alan ‘Low’ Sparhawk’s Retribution Gospel Choir – and have book of his own lyrics published, Nights Of Passed Over. He now also counts Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard as both friend, collaborator (on April) and fan, the Seattle indie-type clearly influenced by Kozelek’s emotionalism and penchant for the melodramatic. It seems a career that began as a bedroom-recorded demo sent to the UK’s iconic 4AD label has undergone many changes in 21 years, but Kozelek’s desire to keep making music seems happily unabated – at his own pace of course.
Speaking to Kozelek in his San Francisco home, he seems pleasant and relaxed. Known to be sometimes irascible, today he’s anything but, describing the shift from working with Isaac Brock’s songs back to his own delicate epics (April’s 11 songs clock in at 74 minutes) as a welcome return to songwriting.
“It felt really good,” he says simply but emphatically. “You know, it’s probably like writing a novel or writing a screenplay and then getting to its final form and the movie is complete and people go to see the movie. It’s quite a journey from the time you put together that first song to when the songs are complete…
“It had been a while since I completed an all-original record,” he continues. “And I know why … it’s work and it takes a lot out of you to make it happen. But once I got that done and we put it out, it’s very rewarding, ‘cause for me anyhow, it’s not easy to do. I’m not a guy that’s, ‘let’s record a record in three or four days or on one of the tour days’. That’s not how I work. It usually takes me about a year to go through it and complete things … but then, you know, it’s all great.”
Kozelek’s dedication to crafting his songs slowly and surely comes hand-in-hand with liberal amounts of self-criticism. “It’s tortuous, you know?” he says candidly. “Sometimes when you record a song, you’re like, ‘god, it’s just a little bit too fast’. It’ll haunt you; it’ll keep you awake at night, because it’s so important for you to get this thing across.
“I think recording has gotten easier for me,” he continues. “I’ve learned things that I can do to make the process easier and I feel more relaxed in the studio than I did years ago, but I still am trying to always make the perfect record.”
In apparent contrast to the artful nature of his recorded compositions, Kozelek tends somewhat to view music as a job these days. Or perhaps vocation would be a better term, encompassing writing, recording and touring … and just living.
“I’m 41 years old and I’ve been doing this for a long time and I know that it’s my fate and it’s what I’m here to do,” he admits. “But it’s just the way it is when you’re a musician you know? Most people get up and they go to work and maybe it’s there in their living room or maybe it’s 20 minutes away. I know people who live in LA and complain that they go to work and it’s an hour away. When I go to work it’s eight hours away or eleven hours away or to Australia – that’s, what, 18 hours away? And you know, it’s no fun to get up and go to work. Nobody likes to do it, but it’s just the way it is when you do this thing.”
So much for the rock & roll dream and tours being one long party – that’s perhaps for the few remaining major label youngsters who haven’t come to grips with the inevitable realities of international touring. As Kozelek rightly notes, “You go to these places and you come back and people say, ‘oh, what did you see?’ And you go, ‘well I saw a lot of the inside of airports and nightclubs and hotels.’And that’s really what touring is all about.”
Over the years Kozelek has met many people while on tour – mostly “nice people”, but there are always exceptions. He joked in another interview that he needs a backstage area so he can ‘avoid the crazies’ these days, but it’s not a simple matter of misanthropy as he explains.
“When you do what I do … there’s a lot of nature going on out there and some people have a lot of issues. I don’t know that it’s necessarily people who take the songs too personally, but there are people out there who feel like you owe them something. I think there’s some real nice people, but I also think there’s people like Mark Chapman [John Lennon’s killer] and the crazy guy that killed Dimebag Darrell. There’s a lot in between that too.
“But really I think that just the older I get, it’s like, ‘yeah I need a room back there with a toilet and maybe some food’,” he says with lightness.
Kozelek’s practical concerns make an odd contrast with his lyrics, which exude the emotion and imagery beloved by his fans. Personal change, the lack of or desire for, has often characterised his songs. With that in mind, I ask him if he compares songs from Down Colorful Hill and his first album proper, the self-titled 1993 effort known commonly as Rollercoaster, to the work he’s doing currently.
“Not so much,” he says simply, before explaining. “Through the experience [of putting together Nights Of Passed Over] I had to go back to the early records. Overall I think that I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed by the early work, lyric-wise … and my vocals are more mature and stronger now.
“In fact I got a guy who’s talked about that all my old records might be coming out on vinyl. That’s exciting, but I’m not … I don’t really want to be involved in it, you know? If somebody else wants to handle that and put that together …”
He pauses before continuing thoughtfully, speaking with the voice of someone experiencing another moment of fragile contentment.
“I don’t know what it is, but I’m just really about feeling good about what I’m doing now and kind of moving ahead.”
MARK KOZELEK in solo mode brings his SUN KIL MOON songs and more to The Troubadour on Thursday July 24, with support from Andrew Morris. The APRIL album, with vocal contributions from Bonnie Prince Billy among others, is out now through Spunk/EMI.
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