“Benji” is the sixth studio album by American indie folk act Sun Kil Moon, released in February 2014 on Caldo Verde Records. Self-produced by primary recording artist Mark Kozelek, the album shares its name with the 1974 film Benji, and was recorded between March and August 2013 at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco.
Kozelek’s songs match a mordant sensibility with a wry wit that remains unblunted by the passage of time. The sprawling ‘Among The Leaves’ from 2012 saw him playfully subverting the album format with a 17-track opus that included one song with an 18-word title. This time round, the humour is more subtle but the observations on life, and increasingly death, are no less keen. Kozelek has a novelist’s eye for detail, and right from languid opener ‘Carissa’ – a song about his second cousin – he paints a vivid world and invites you to see it through his eyes.
The ideas come so thick and fast that Kozelek has to speed up his delivery for songs like ‘Richard Ramirez Died Today Of Natural Causes’, a claustrophobic meditation on the death of the serial killer known as the Night Stalker that recalls Modest Mouse at their darkest.
The album features contributions from Owen Ashworth, Jen Wood, Will Oldham, and Sonic Youth‘s Steve Shelley. The album was recognized as one of The 100 Best Albums of the year by Rolling Stone,
