Live Review: Sun Kil Moon

Mark Kozelek had a career-defining year. Momentum gained from the release of Benji, his most honest, haunting album, was negated by his one-sided feud with The War On Drugs, his outburst at audience members that wouldn’t “shut the fuck up” and then an album of straight-down-the-line Christmas carols that felt like they were probably taking the piss.

Audience members Monday night at the beautiful City Recital Hall were understandably hesitant, wondering whether “white Kanye” would go on another rant, or if it really was a case of the media making one bad mood seem like the holy grail of douche. The crowd at three-quarters full venue thought it had its answer in the first three-seconds of Sun Kil Moon walking out on stage: “Turn the fucking AC down! Sophie, are you up there? It’s too cold in here, turn the goddamn AC down. Is everyone else cold in here?” The brain immediately thinks, “What a self-absorbed dick-hole.” Truth is that it was too cold in there, and as the night wore on it turned out that Kozelek and Sophie had quite the enviable working relationship and it turned out that Mark Kozelek was just trying to make people laugh.

Sun Kil Moon and Mark Kozelek combined have U2 levels of content to burn through, and the epic three-hour show barely scraped the surface. Kozelek spent more time banging the “same fucking drumbeat” on his standing floor tom than at the guitar, as the three-piece rolled out refreshing live versions of tracks from the last four years of Kozelek’s output. Screaming fits permeated Richard Ramirez Died Today Of Natural Causes and the brilliant new song, Ali/Spinks 2, while the hands-down standout of the night was when Kozelek invited up someone from the audience to sing I Got You Babe. He started cursing the “Twenty Staff Members” this place had because it was taking them so long to get a girl down from the balcony seating to stage. Kozelek ended up asking one of the ushers if they could sing – and you bet your arse they could. When the girl from the top eventually joined them, she was fabulous as well, the trio was so comfortable that they began ad-libbing harmonies. John, the usher, was invited up twice more to play the drumbeat that Kozelek couldn’t be bothered playing.

As the audience left, buzzing and excited, Kozelek was redeemed; not by apologising for his actions, rather by proving that everyone needs to stop taking themselves so goddamn seriously. The War On Drugs sound like beer commercial rock; and that’s fine. Mark Kozelek was rapping on Ali/Spinks 2 and sang a ten-minute song about how he wanted to have sex with someone from Nando’s Chicken; and that’s fine too.