The artist as reporter: Sun Kil Moon’s morose new album

Mark Kozelek’s stunning new release as Sun Kil Moon, “Benji,” isn’t much of an album. It’s a collection of short stories with living, breathing characters. Unless, of course, they’ve been stricken by heartbreaking tragedy, like many of the subjects Kozelek portrays.

Benji doesn’t particularly sound like a revelation — at least on the surface. Kozelek still specializes in a sparse and raw, yet subtly gorgeous folk sound, with occasional forays into the upbeat (“Ben’s My Friend”) or the tongue-in-cheek ode to “dad rock” (“I Love My Dad”). These songs could have felt right at home on any of Sun Kil Moon’s previous records — until you listen to the lyrics.

Though his last record, 2012’s “Among The Leaves,” may not have been Kozelek’s best, it might have informed Benji as much as any of his past works in terms of pure vocal delivery. On “Leaves,” Kozelek employed a rapid-fire and painfully honest stream of consciousness. Packing as many thoughts into a bar as R. Kelly did on “Trapped in the Closet,” he left no detail off the table. This is the case with Benji — albeit through a far more tragic and sobering lens. This is not meant to be easy listening.

A lot of people die on Benji. Whether they die from an exploding aerosol can, a gunshot wound, natural causes or an aneurysm triggered by “an awkward way of playing barre chords” on the guitar, Kozelek treats their stories with a matter-of-fact grace.  

Though many of the characters are family members, he doesn’t once beg for our sympathy or fall into the grimy sludge of melancholy. He acts as a reporter, keeping his subjects at an arm’s length, no matter how personal or seemingly impossible these stories are to confront. Perhaps even more admirable is that Kozelek never pretends to be closer than he was with a relative for dramatic effect.

On the opening track, “Carissa” — named after Kozelek’s second cousin who died from an aerosol can blowing up while she took out the trash — he clearly defines their distant relationship, but still justifies the catharsis (“I didn’t know her well at all, but it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t / meant to find some poetry, to make some sense of this, to find a deeper meaning”). By contrast, Kozelek isn’t bashful in the slightest when addressing his closest family members.

Each parent gets a love letter of sorts on Benji, with songs titled “I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love” and “I Love My Dad.” Just when you think Kozelek has taken a break from loss and heartache, “Mother’s Love” reveals itself as a sorrowful brace for the worst. While he’s appreciating all that his mother has done, it’s also a sobering realization that “[his] mother is 75 / and one day she won’t be there to hear [him] cry.”

Even deep romantic love isn’t spared from the context of death on Benji. “Jim Wise” tells a heart-wrenching (and true) story of a friend of Kozelek’s father, who mercy-killed his suffering wife in the hospital before attempting — and failing — to take his own life (the gun jammed). When Kozelek and his father visit him, he’s on house arrest as he awaits his trial — a tragic punishment for a tragic malfunction. The story is harrowing enough, but Kozelek conveys Wise’s undying love even further, noting that “his eyes welled up when he told us about how much she loved the backyard garden and the budding rosebush.” Kozelek grasps this pain and anguish better than anyone and even occasionally makes time for his own.       

As is the case with the album closer, “Ben’s My Friend,” a highly infectious and danceable (there’s even a saxophone solo and melodic “ba ba bas”), yet introspective tune about Kozelek’s jealousy of his more famous friend, Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service).  

It could be the most quietly devastating cut on the record, as these thoughts of inferiority literally send Kozelek into a “meltdown.” When his girlfriend asks what’s going on with him, he replies: “I can’t explain it, it’s a middle-aged thing.” Though it’s a vague response, likely intended to change the subject, Kozelek needn’t explain this “thing” for us to see what he’s experiencing — an internal crisis, an apprehensive cry for help.     

After the final “ba ba ba” quickly fades out, you can’t help but wonder how an artist like Kozelek could sit on so much personal material and finally deliver his masterpiece this late into his career.