Review Summary: Heroes alone destroy, as I destroy / you
The genius of Mark Kozalek is that he's not a genius; his brilliance lies in the fact that he's not brilliant. He's just a dude groping around the manifest complexities and iniquities of the world, just like you, who happens to be extremely good (though not, crucially, virtuostic) at his chosen instrument, usually the guitar, which is here left in its case in the attic, supplanted by a bass. His lyrics are diaristic, almost pointillistic, but certainly not beautiful, or rather if they are they're not by intent. In the words of poet Frank O'Hara, with whom Kozalek shares an artistic kinship:
"What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else, they are just there in whatever form I can find them."
Hence why, even in the grotesquely misogynistic remarks and the implorations for lesser musicians to fellate him, I rooted for Mark -- he's learning (or not), changing (or not) but documenting everything, archiving the minutiae, but even if he doesn't quite get it he's trying. Hence Universal Themes, right, coming after critically acclaimed and universally adored Benji, a volte-face from the refinement and the beautiful ugliness in favour of a sprawling mess because -- why? Because *** you. Because I'm not done yet. Because he's on his 'journey', if you will, and he's following it, rather than necessarily engineering it.
It is this distinction that comprises Common as Light's mission statement; a literal road trip, a literal journey, ending at home nestled against his partner, her hair splayed against his chest while she dozes and he reflects. "Speak, memory" he intones into a mirror and voila, a two-hour sprawl of half-formed ideas, occasional exquisite moments, a mess of tenuous connection, except notably on the two singles, chosen perhaps because they don't represent the album and feel like outliers, God Bless Ohio's lilting guitar and kraut-rock infused drums, treading beautifully sincere lyrical territory, I Love Portugal's ridiculous hazy guitar, echolocating crickets chirping in the background, a beer at your side, all that pastoral ***, where the album is practically industrial, not in genre but in focus. How else to explain the chugging baselines that never become louche?
Essentially: have you ever been waiting for a bus and had someone accost you, not with malice but with stories, and at first you're reticent to entertain them so you look at your phone or light a smoke but eventually you get drawn and then engaged and then enthralled? It's like that, but instead of the 30 minutes you have before your bus arrives Kozalek takes advantage of a two-hour window. It's frustrating, exhausting, but, you feel, you're better for it. There are breaks for you to engage your interlocutor, here rendered in exquisite guitar passages which punctuate The Highway Song, the guitar solo in Bergen to Trondheim, but this is Mark's album, make no mistake, and he's not having any of your bliss or feelings or input, this is his so help him God.
So you have the weirdly beautiful exhortation, "all transgender [people] are invited, and they'll get in for free", and sure he misses the point that sex is constructed along with gender but that's o.k. because he gets the gist -- "rednecks bury the ax with transgenders" is laughable, but it's not.
Sarah Lawrence College Song, meanwhile, puts me in mind of Deerhunter's Snakeskin in it's effortless cool performed by the antithesis of that attribute, the disjunct making it fun. Philadelphia is hilarious, cringe-worthy, terrible and wonderful all at once, Seventies TV Show Theme Song will make you want to punch a hole in your laptop until it's complimented by the touching closer, and it's all so ***ing inconsistent and weird and fun it's hard not to smile.
So Mark Kozalek repudiates his gifts once again, squanders his talent, blithely blunders his way through a double album that sometimes feels endless, goodwill from fans and critics in the gutter. He speaks of his disquiet vis-a-vis his paunch, his love of serial killers (he's american and it's his right goddammit), his truly weird theory about Eliza Lam that makes you want to wring his neck: a mirror, "speak memory", "speak preoccupations", an album. No hugging, no learning. Brave, pitch-black comedy, self-lampoonery. Did anyone expect this? I didn't, and I can't think of an antecedent outside of Kozaleks own hewn path. Like it, fine, don't like it, even better. I don't know if I can recommend -- you'll have to draw your own conclusions -- but listen. Like the conversation at the bus-stop, prepare to be surprised, and for the world to snap into a new focus, even only for a little bit, afterward.
