76. Sun Kil Moon - “Window Sash Weights”
Sun Kil Moon is the forefather of the recent trend within music that has artist’s shedding lyrical conventions and being more direct and unpredictable with their delivery. He’s a continuous pioneer, wading ever deeper into the depths of his own stream of consciousness, oftentimes getting lost in his thoughts and muddying his intentions along the way, but all the while enticing us down a path that eludes prediction in the most addicting of fashions. It’s like a continuous diary entry, as if for the length of an album we get to step out of our own body and see the world through somebody else’s, replete with thoughts, idiosyncrasies, biases, and emotions. It’s a beautiful and enjoyable journey to tag along for – in part because Kozelek is a unique and entertaining individual, but also because it allows us to momentarily escape our own island of consciousness and see that there are other’s out there who share our thoughts and feelings. Not our exact thoughts and feelings, but rather the same phenomena – mundane moments that suddenly swell with feeling or meaning, little experiences of perfection couched within fears and anxieties, mistakes and weaknesses, haunting memories and stubborn regrets. It’s cathartic and entertaining all at once, and it speaks to what can be achieved through art when you throw away the conventions of structure and expectation.
This jam in particular takes us through the entire spectrum of human emotion and experience. It’s simple yet complex, exploring the superficial ins and outs of the quotidian, while simultaneously striking at those glimmers of meaning, much like the subtle guitar picking that anchors and swells throughout. However, by far my favorite aspect is the melody of the “chorus”. It has a beautiful yet frail momentousness to it that cradles the listener as it unfolds. You can sense the sort of presque vu one gets within special moments of contentedness, moments that seem to hint at something more, as if you’re balancing on the cusp of enlightenment, waiting for the slightest of breezes to carry you towards the undefinable.
