Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts Of The Great Highway (Deluxe Edition) (2007) CD-Rip

Drug abuse, jealousy, bloated egos, alcoholism, and sleeping with a band member's girl, are among the numerous inglorious reasons that many a rock and roll band has decided to call it quits. However, among this ignoble collection of excuses, not one reason has dispassionately slain as many of your favorite rockers, and been called out with more misguided sincerity than the proclamation of "artistic differences;" otherwise known as the reason Rob Zombie has a solo career. The most continuously baffling aspect of what I will dub, for the purposes of this review, "Rob Zombie Syndrome", is that nine times out of ten these "differences" only lead an artist to embark on a solo venture where they make music that sounds, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the music they had performed with their previous band. Thing is, most of the time this material is bereft of all the frenetic energy and inspiration of their prior group.

In light of this gloomy context, Sun Kil Moon, the new solo project from Red House Painters virtuoso Mark Kozelek, can be understood as a miraculous unforeseen godsend for his listening audience. Instead of the album simply serving as a coda to all of Kozelek's previous incarnations, this new batch of material displays him putting to use a variety of wondrous subtle sonic touches that mark unbelievable artistic growth, unraveling unexplored harmonic territory while staying faithful to his trademark brand of languid folk-rock introspection.

With Sun Kil Moon, whose members include fellow Red House Painters cohort Anthony Koutsos on drums, American Music Club's Tim Mooney (also on drums), and ex-Black Lab bassist Geoff Stanfield, Kozelek has finally taken the time to fully indulge his own artistic vision. For instance, all of the numbers on Ghosts of the Great Highway are Kozelek originals; in other words, no more AC/DC covers! Furthermore, it seems that, for the first time, Kozelek has put out an album whose meticulous sequencing yields more than just a random scattershot collection of great songs, but rather a complete cohesive musical statement.