Sun Kil Moon
Live @ Astro Club, Fontanafredda (PN) - 19/10/2025

LA RECENSIONE

This is not a review, but a petition:

• concerts at 7 PM on (pre-)work days, especially if they're held in the middle of nowhere so it takes two hours just to get home. Then we 35-year-olds who have been old for 20 years need to already be in bed by 10 PM;
• if these aren’t danceable concerts, seats should be mandatory, to avoid hordes of swaying, out-of-sync zombies who just can’t stand still after two hours on their feet. Again, we 35-year-olds who have been old for 20 years can’t take it anymore, our ankles swell, our feet hurt;
• let’s go back to the Covid rules: those who are sick watch the streaming, especially if the concert is held in a room as big as my house and with zero ventilation;
• the club bar can dump the ice only during applause, especially during mellow concerts.

That said… Mark Kozelek, I hate you.

I hate you because you made beautiful things, and then you decided to punish us all with Benji. And of course, the other night, you played a hefty chunk of Benji. An album that, let’s be honest, I can’t stand: interminable, endlessly rambling, stuffed with references to mom and his first fuck. And yet I still went to see him, even though I knew, even though I dreaded it, even though we were lost in the middle of the plain, an hour and a half from home, even though it was a Sunday and we’d get home late.

Mark Kozelek, I hate you. I hate you because I thought you were unpleasant and full of yourself. But no: he's awkward, he apologizes, he’s ill at ease. He messes up, he’s offbeat, he’s out of tune, he complains about his buzzing Telecaster, he chit-chats, looks for interaction with the adoring audience, imitates Bruce Springsteen, breaks the tuner, and if he were Venetian, I think he’d be swearing a blue streak.

At a certain point he clearly decides he’s done playing the guitar and leaves everything to Ben (the Hungarian keyboardist from Amoeba, with whom he’s released an album), who keeps things rolling and plays along, improvising as best he can. At one point, Kozelek even asks him to try a song from a film Ben clearly doesn’t know. He tries, they give up. If he were Venetian, I bet he’d be swearing too.

The concert was a mix of monologues and dialogues, requests from the audience, 12-minute spoken word bits about death with a one-liner that actually makes you laugh, songs started and maybe finished.

I keep on hating Mark Kozelek because he made me travel all that way, made me change my mind, and I’d even see him again (maybe closer to home), and I already know I’ll listen again tomorrow. But Benji still no.