Sun Kil Moon, Jesu combine well

Longtime friends Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu) and Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon) combined their individual takes on sonic texture and songwriting in the coherent and cohesive collaboration record Jesu / Sun Kil Moon.

The indie-folk band Sun Kil Moon gained widespread prominence in 2014 with the release of Benji but Kozelek was the frontman of the eponymous slowcore band Red House Painters decades before. While Red House Painters’ songs essentially revolve around the same themes of love, isolation and family, Sun Kil Moon removes the shielding veil of metaphor and records Kozelek’s life in journalistic detail over often stripped-down instrumentation with nylon-string guitar.

Jesu is the shoegaze project of Justin Broadrick, who pioneered the industrial metal genre as the guitarist and singer of Godflesh.

The album itself is predictable in the sense that Broadrick and Kozelek both incorporate musical ideas that are familiar to their other albums. The instrumentation is slow and sparse but instead of merely repeating arpeggios on acoustic guitar, lilting and distorted chords are interspersed with synthesizers. The crunchy guitars harken back to Jesu’s Silver EP days, and some songs with acoustic guitar are reminiscent of Universal Themes. Aside from the instrumentation, stream-of-consciousness lyrics meditate upon concepts of love and death.

The first track of the record, “Good Morning My Love,” is about someone who doesn’t know what the word “rekindle” means when their lover asks to rekindle their relationship. Between the lines of “rekindle” are everyday moments such as watching boxing matches and taking in landscapes. It is in trivial moments like this that something profound is suggested: Perhaps there’s a deeper meaning in the everyday interactions that we have with each other.

In an interview with Rainn Wilson, Kozelek describes his new diaristic style as something that happened after he ran out of metaphors. Kozelek sings about grieving parents in the song “Exodus,” touching on the death of Mike Tyson’s daughter, who the song is named after.

The lyrics also reflect on controversial events of the past few months like his frequent altercations with music journalists and other musicians. These events include Sun Kil Moon’s criticism of fellow musicians The War on Drugs, who were the main targets of Kozelek’s diss track. He’s a self-aware guy, and he knows how the media perceives his often jaded persona but the media doesn’t determine the music but rather the perception of it. The music itself is definitely worth listening to, even with all the controversy surrounding this band.