Indie Beef
October 29, 2014 4:15 PM   Subscribe

Mark Kozelek aka Sun Kil Moon is a personality. Recently he played the Ottawa folk festival and there was sound bleed from another strage from the band The War on Drugs. This irritated Kozelek and he wrote a song about it. It had mixed results. Kozelek has apparently been watching the Internet for mention of him and The War on Drugs because the second diss track has been released based on the criticism Kozelek has received.
posted by josher71 (33 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Who said punk was dead?
posted by GuyZero at 4:18 PM on October 29, 2014


Gotta say, I saw Red House Painters live a little north of 15 years ago (yikes!) And it was one of the best shows I've seen.
posted by jpe at 4:22 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Then two days later I get an e-mail back from him, saying “the offer has expired, maybe when I get home from tour I’ll go to Starbucks and buy your record.”

I will go to Starbucks, and buy their record, and listen to Red Eyes on repeat.
posted by nathancaswell at 4:25 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]




After reasserting his opinion that The War On Drugs sound like "Don Henley meets John Cougar meets Dire Straits meets 'Born In The USA'-era Bruce Springsteen"

Oh yeah that sounds absolutely awful, who would want to listen to that /HAMBURGER
posted by nathancaswell at 4:28 PM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


I do love a good beef.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:34 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty sure this is just Kozelek fucking around. That said, I've seen him in concert a few times, and for a dude who writes such sad bastard music, he really puts the 'prick' in prickly.
posted by Think_Long at 4:37 PM on October 29, 2014


You know hip hop is the soft and flabby when the hardest diss track of the year comes from the guy behind the damn Red House Painters.
posted by milarepa at 4:53 PM on October 29, 2014 [12 favorites]


I've been following this PR campaign (because that's basically what it is) from afar for a little while now, and while I'll always still have a special place in my heart for that album about the roller coaster (the one where he sings the line about "washing away the violence that runs in my blood" in particular) I honestly don't understand why some people seem to want to make indie as much about lifestyle and celebrity culture BS as the cess pit of mass market pop media that it used to not be.That's not what people come to indie music looking for, and it makes me respect Kozalek just a tiny bit less than I used to. Not only because this stuff doesn't resonate well with his body of work for me, but more importantly, because it's so unimaginative and boring. I can find trolls just about anywhere these days--they're a dime a dozen. Who cares? If trolling becomes a legitimate PR strategy, we're just going to have to put up with that many more trolls. Is there some big demand for that I'm missing?
posted by saulgoodman at 4:56 PM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


Kozalek seems like a cranky old man. WHich is his thing and, so, fine. We're not talking geopolitics here. But at the same time, his inability to let this one go is making me worried for him
posted by GilloD at 5:29 PM on October 29, 2014


yeah, i hate it when musicians whose output i REALLY like do stupid, petty, contrary baloney like this, and then won't even do the simplest thing like apologize and walk it back. I mean, what does kozelek possibly have to gain in this? does he think The War on Drugs will just hang up their hats and give up music?
posted by gorbichov at 5:29 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


I love Benji and saw him live earlier this year in LA. He was pretty adamant there would be no old songs on the set and called out the Rolling Stones for essentially playing nothing but old songs. And he also went off on Jeff Buckley saying how much he hated his voice or something to that effect. There was nervous laughter from the crowd for that.

Was a jarring experience listening to these great songs about family, death and suddenly hearing Jeff Buckley being dissed. Not terribly surprised he was not very nice to his audience.
posted by viramamunivar at 5:45 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


I guess this kinda worked because I ended up checking out his new album (because I've never listened to him well let's see what gives him the right to talk like that etc.) to and liking it despite finding his whole bit here thoroughly childish. The music by itself comes off as a mature, flaw-admitting take on being an old dude facing decline, so he's actually undermining his own appeal pretty hard here.

Anyway, Mark Kozalek, you're not bad, but there's nothing un-white about your music and the only thing keeping you out of Starbucks is that you're a little too sad and you mumble.
posted by atoxyl at 5:53 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Kozelek has been ploughing the "poor old me, underappreciated, withering on the vine, supplanted by less talented pretty-boy singer songwriters" line for more than a decade now. I saw him at the Grace Emily hotel in Adelaide in 2004, and his opening sentences were berating the venue, moaning about the ambient noise level, and lamenting the fact that he had a cold.

That said, the moment he started singing it was little short a revelation: that incredibly resonant voice from the Red House Painter records was, well, *his voice*. Completely untreated. My mouth was agape for the next hour, though I did manage to fit in my fair share of "shooshing" on his behalf. (One guy, acoustic guitar, delicate songs: tough to counter the bar noise, let alone the jerkwads conversing in the crowd proper, who seem to have wormed their way in without paying.)

Cutting to the chase: his mood never lightened, the set was utterly beautiful, and his interaction with the crowd varied from minimal to grumbling to non-existent. No encore, almost no acknowledgement that the set had ended: exit, stage back. The one redeeming aspect was that my boyfriend of the time caught Kozelek as he exited the venue on his way back to the hotel, managed to communicate a heartfelt "thankyou", and thus drew a small smile out of a very downcast face. That might sound somewhat trivial, but for a desperately depressed man, drawing a small, almost inadvertant smirk from the miserable old grump was a minor triumph, and lifted his spirits for many days afterward.

Musically speaking, it's still one of the best gigs I've attended.
posted by pjm at 6:46 PM on October 29, 2014 [8 favorites]


No doubt, the man's got a hell of a voice.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:12 PM on October 29, 2014


Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway, an album of stories about forgotten, now-dead, professional boxers is about as brilliant in execution as it is in concept. I can accept that there are dour, self important people in the world if it means we also get great art.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:35 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Kozelek has been ploughing the "poor old me, underappreciated, withering on the vine, supplanted by less talented pretty-boy singer songwriters" line for more than a decade now. I saw him at the Grace Emily hotel in Adelaide in 2004, and his opening sentences were berating the venue, moaning about the ambient noise level, and lamenting the fact that he had a cold.

Heh, yep. Saw him a couple years ago in London and he was moaning about the venue and the city, but reminding us how much money he earned from doing the gig. Played the then-unreleased Livingstone Bramble which has as a chorus "I hate Nels Cline" (among other people), so someone asked him why and he went off on an epic rant about Wilco and alt-country.

Then of course he has UK Blues which is about how much he hates Britain in general, although to be fair I was at the festival gig he mentions, and it was shit - he had major sound bleed into his tent from a freaking fairground ride that made it almost impossible to hear him.
posted by Pink Frost at 7:49 PM on October 29, 2014


Played the then-unreleased Livingstone Bramble which has as a chorus "I hate Nels Cline" (among other people), so someone asked him why and he went off on an epic rant about Wilco and alt-country.

Heh one of the songs I just listened to has a line about how he likes to practice guitar but not as much as Nels Cline. I thought it was a tribute!
posted by atoxyl at 7:53 PM on October 29, 2014


Regardless of how you feel about War on Drugs, this is entirely unjustified and infantile behavior. I think we can have great art without behaving like children on a playground. I get it: your favorite band sucks. Just as pointless now as it was then.

And all the way to the corner everyday - You were there for me
posted by Otherwise at 7:57 PM on October 29, 2014


Important news - Mark Kozalek says he likes Nels Cline, he just thought it was funny. So I think I'm gonna take this too as an old (at heart, apologies to the middle-aged) dude who thinks it's funny to be an asshole. Not that it makes him any less of an asshole.
posted by atoxyl at 8:06 PM on October 29, 2014


I like my share of Sun Kil Moon / RHP records, the guy does have a legitimately great voice, but every time I've seen him he's been just the worst kind of insufferable prick, insulting the audience, insulting the venue, and generally holding everyone around him in great contempt. Last time he was talking about looking for pretty girls in the front row that he was going to talk to after the show, and asking less-attractive people to move farther back in the crowd. He just seems like the worst fucking guy. This idiotic feud thing he's doing seemed a little funny at first, but now it just seems embarrassing for him, like you'd expect it to be when a 47-year-old acts like a 4chan troll.
posted by whir at 8:11 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway, an album of stories about forgotten, now-dead, professional boxers is about as brilliant in execution as it is in concept.

It's easily, easily in my top 10 favorite albums ever. Absolutely essential listening for long road trips. (His album of early AC/DC covers, What's Next to the Moon, is almost as good.)

Don't really know or care what he's on about with this recent mishegoss.
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:21 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway, an album of stories about forgotten, now-dead, professional boxers

As a kid I watched Ray Mancini literally beat Duk Koo Kim to death on live TV, and believe me when I say I will never forget that.

I do agree though, incredible album. Glenn Tipton brings me nearly to tears every time I hear it.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:44 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


METAFILTER: the only thing keeping you out of Starbucks is that you're a little too sad and you mumble.
posted by philip-random at 10:15 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


"Whitest band I'd ever heard" from a singer-songwriter white dude with an acoustic guitar is head exploding level of irony.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:50 AM on October 30, 2014


also I guess I misspelled his name every time yeah suck on that mark k.
posted by atoxyl at 1:53 AM on October 30, 2014


I love Mark Kozelek's music. The fact that he is a grumpy bastard doesn't bother me. This also applies to Richard Hawley, Morrissey and my favourite local musician Dave Ward Maclean. The latter also has a song about how he hates Hallelujah in all its forms (exempting Cohen's).
Regardless of a musician's behaviour, if their work is wonderful, all the other stuff they do is white noise. It simply doesn't have much bearing on my life - and why should it? I can't claim to actually know these people.
Apart from Dave. Dave affectionately calls me a c*nt on a regular basis.
I'm pretty sure it's affectionate, anyway.
I definitely don't care.
posted by alexordave at 3:44 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


You're not wrong, Mark. You're just an asshole.
posted by echocollate at 6:07 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


It's obvious here who the true heavy metal artists are.

Isn't it?
posted by clvrmnky at 9:03 AM on October 30, 2014


I sort of thought the first song was just him doubling down on the fact that someone got offended by him saying 'this next song is called the war on drugs can suck my cock'. Anyway, it's not his best song, but it's still pretty good! Even if there were no band called The War On Drugs, saying The War On Drugs can suck my cock over and over again is pretty funny. And I have to say it's nice to hear Mark K laughing his ass off about this in the most recent recording.
posted by mike_bling at 11:23 AM on October 30, 2014


Ok, you all have convinced me that I can forego the pleasure of actually seeing him perform live -- the behavior described would certainly diminish my respect for his music (whether it ought to or not, I am sure that it would.)

In the meantime I'll continue to enjoy the recordings I have purchased. For those who are familiar with his body of work, what do you particularly recommend? I have a few Red House Painters albums and the Rock 'n' Roll Singer EP, out of which I prefer the latter. I also have a live release of a tour in Scandinavia -- that one didn't capture my attention much and I was wondering if it was the recording or the material (which is mostly from his Sun Kil Moon period.)

For those who aren't familiar with his work, here are two tracks I quite like:posted by Nerd of the North at 11:41 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't like much of his stuff, I don't think, and I believe he's a dick or whatever, but Gustavo is an amazing piece of songwriting, it cuts him a lot of slack imho.
posted by hap_hazard at 3:01 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Who said punk was dead?

Me. When I heard some guy complaining about noise bleed. I want noise to make me bleed. Sorry about your nosebleed, dude. My solution would have been to turn it the fuck up.
posted by lumpenprole at 4:20 PM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


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