Mark Kozelek - Lost Verses Live
I try to listen to new stuff, things normally off of my radar, not often, but every now and again. My wife introduced me to a lot of music I never would have messed with on my own and found I could rock with; Nina Simone, Tom Waits, Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel. These are some of the hits. I have also on occasion took the advice of various publications and experts and picked up and hated some absolute audio nonsense that was supposed to be brilliant; an expensive-ass collection of songs by the Subway Sect (fucking horrible) and “Marquee Moon” by Television are good examples. I don’t care who thinks so, those two albums suck. Period. But you have to keep reaching out for new stuff, to gain an appreciation for stuff. To be well-rounded and stuff.
No.
So the problem this week down on the FSS farm was that we felt maybe we should try and branch out. Try and listen to stuff that was new and just released to:
a) keep our fingers on the pulse of music buying youth and
b) to maybe get some hits for our fucking site.
So we went to Vintage Vinyl and I couldn’t find what I wanted to listen to so I bought this album “Lost Verses Live” by Mark Kozelek.
Im a set this up for y’all. Before one song, it is a live album like I said, he’s making stage small-talk to set up a witty anecdote and he asks the crowd…
“Do You Appreciate Me?”
No.
Let me go through my thought process on buying this album. He was the lyricist and singer for the Red House Painters, I had heard some of their songs and thought they were okay. I had heard from various places that he was a great writer and so on. So I thought, well, maybe this’ll be good.
No.
It ain’t. I wanted it to be. I listened to it 5 times. It just isn’t good. At all. It appears as though Mark Kozelek may be a great writer just like they said, but alot like Leonard Cohen, his shitty, shitty , boring fucking music gets in the way.
Every song on this album sounds nearly exactly the same, the same timing, same tone, same sad-ass execution every time. I understand the concept of sad-core, but this is really fucking ridiculous. The album is a long downer but what makes it unforgivable is that it’s a predictable one. It’s not pretty, it’s not stark. It just sucks. There are 3 covers, 2 from that guy from Modest Mouse’s side project Ugly Casanova and you know what the other one is? Send In The Clowns.
No.
Yup. It’s ridiculous, I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. This whole recording, taken from about a dozen different performances all over the world, is the weepiest singer-songwriter dude-with-an-acoustic-standing-there shit I have ever heard, never varying in tempo or approach. Even once. So that’s it, this one goes on the pile of albums I must be too stupid or too something to appreciate. Or do you think I can maybe get back the 12 dollars I dropped on this?
No.
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