Mark Kozelek - Great American Music Hall 2004 (Bootleg)

Artist: Mark Kozelek
Album: Great American Music Hall 2004 (Bootleg)
Release: 2004
Label: N/A

Tracklist:

1. Other Than That, Everything’s Great
2. Pancho Villa
3. Lily And Parrots
4. I’m Sorry... I’m Shallow
5. Glenn Tipton
6. Void (Cruiser)
7. Carry Me, Ohio
8. Down Through
9. Fever Dog
10. Green Manalishi / Gentle Moon
11. Duk Koo Kim
12. All Mixed Up
13. Revelation Big Sur
14. If You’re Going To San Francisco
15. What’s Going Next To The Moon / Bad Boy Boogie / Summer Dress
16. Katy Song / Celebrated Summer
17. Grace Cathedral Park
18. Dragonflies
19. Three-Legged Cat

While Mark Kozelek may not go down history as the world’s most dynamic songrwriter, his slow, often lengthy contributions in Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters and under his own name cannot be doubt for their brutal honesty. As a musician, he’s more content to paint his aural pictures by vividly describing moments and places to describe how he feels about the fragile, often shattered relationships in his life. As such, sometimes his records may take patience to get through, but once this boundary is broken, they will draw you into beautiful realms of heartbreak.

Captured at one of two gigs at the Great American Music Hall six years ago, this high-quality bootleg captures Kozelek in absolute top shape, stripping the lengthy and morose Red House Painters material and his more recent, folkier Sun Kil Moon work (culled from what was then his most recent record, Ghosts of the Great Highway) down to their barest acoustic forms. For a new listener, this setlist is a great place to start. For a veteran fan, it’s likely impeccable. Suitably, Kozelek announces his then-present rut-- a bout of the flu with no medical insurance, the recent end of a relationship and his drummer quitting. Yet that hardly slows down “Pancho Villa,” “Lily and Parrots,” “Void,” and the Sun Kil Moon calling card “Carry Me, Ohio.”

The barren, hollow sadness of live rarity “Down Through” is reworked slightly but offers as much disturbing beauty as the original-- not least when Kozelek reaches the song’s refrain, singing “I still remember the sting in my hand from when I hit you.” “Duk Koo Kim,” a hymn of solitude rolls in the fog and conjures nighttime views of the bay, a yearning for love lost, the disorienting feeling of waking from a troubling dream, and the tragedy of the titular Korean boxer who perished from a blow in a match with Ray Mancini.

Kozelek is no stranger to covers, but what make his special are his complete rearrangement of them. Sometimes, they’re recognizable; at others, the only similarity lies in the lyrics. He tosses in Fleetwood Mac’s “Green Manalishi” with “Gentle Moon,” a superior version of the Cars’ “All Mixed Up,” and two AC/DC covers before the worship of RHP classic “Summer Dress.” The ultimate mix of cover and oirignal material, however, is his mixing the numbing “Katy Song” with Husker Du’s “Celebrated Summer.” The former haunts like a dark cloud, even in its newer, more pastoral live version, but the latter shines with Kozelek’s personal coat of nostalgia in lieu of Bob Mould’s shout-singing and fuzzyness. It’s near-perfect yin and yang.

Closing out the intimate performance are a capellas of the the seemingly-light-to-totally-dark “Grace Cathedral Park”and the frozen reflection of “Dragonflies” as well as the oddity “Three-Legged Cat.” While this decision may have been spur-of-the-moment, it nonetheless proves that Kozelek’s voice is as golden as his (considerable) guitar skills.

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-Asa