I ran into a friend of mine a few weeks back as he was
eating his lunch. We talked for a bit before I asked why he had missed our
weekly hangout the previous Friday. Turns out he had headed back to the small
town where he lived the summer before college started. While me and the rest of
the guys were eating oreos and playing Magic he had attended his first funeral.
“Guess I have to get
used to it.”
“Yeah, we are at that age,” I replied.
I felt shocked when those words exited my mouth. That same
sentence had been spoken by my dad a few months before. He was discussing his
mother’s failing health and how his father had died of a stroke a few years
before. He was also trying to console me at the time; my grandmother on my
mom’s side was losing all her memories to a butterfly tumor that was engulfing
her brain. My dad and I were both at those ages. The ages when his parents and
uncles started passing away and my grandparents moved on. It was a strange, sad
sensation. A sensation I keep feeling as I listen to Benji.
Mark Kozelek is a few years younger than my dad and the
sudden increase in death is evident in Kozelek’s music. Benji is filled with death. Kozelek opens with “Carissa” and over a
slow guitar he remembers his 2nd cousin who died in a freak
accident; an aerosol can exploded while she was taking out the trash. It’s the
same way that Kozelek’s uncle went and “Carissa” is connected to “Truck Driver”
where Kozelek’s Leonard Cohen dirge becomes a eulogy for his long dead uncle.
Kozelek hasn’t necessarily seen more close ones pass away, but he tells their
stories better than anyone. Yes Benji is
filled with death, but to say its death obsessed would be the same as calling
life death obsessed.
Kozelek isn’t happy that he has to be the one writing these
songs. “Don’t like this gettin’ older stuff” he says on the grim “Richard
Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes.” The devastating “Pray for Newtown” has
Kozelek rattling off all the mass shootings he can remember in his life. “CNN
was promoting the Batman killer/His eyes were glazed like he was from
Mars/Yesterday he was no one, today he was a star.” Over jarringly jaunty
keyboard Kozelek sits down with “Jim Wise” who mercy killed his bedridden wife
before he turned the gun on himself, only for it to jam. He’s on tour when he
gets a call saying that an old guitar buddy of his has died and as he bounces
from hotel to hotel he frets over his mother’s health. “My mother is 75/She’s
the closest friend I’ve had in my life.”
“I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love” is a grand reminder
that not everything on Benji is
rooted in death. Kozelek gives a shout out to the lessons his
dad has taught him on the country twang of “I Love My Dad” while simultaneously
admonishing his father’s shenanigans. “My dad’s still fighting with his
girlfriend/over his flirting with the girls at Panera bread,” he sighs later on
the album. Two of most stunning moments on Benji
are in league with Kozelek’s parental tributes; songs that don’t have death
as the central theme. “I Watched the Film ‘The Song Remains the Same’” is over
ten minutes long but passes like a dream. Beautifully watery guitars and Sigur
Ros like voices back Kozelek as he uses the Zeppelin film as a tool to explore
vivid memories. He punches a kid in middle school to the cheers of his
classmates only to feel abysmal. “I was never a young schoolyard bully/And
wherever you are, that poor kid, I’m so sorry.” “Dogs” is the other track that
cuts frighteningly deep without being immersed in morality. “Dogs” might be the
most emotionally raw song about sex written…ever. Kozelek treads through
various encounters that he describes with impossible realism. He admits that he
only almost got into a threesome due to everyone involved being “Drunk as
skunks and high off Darvon,” he lets into sexual temptation and he loses his
virginity while cheating on his girlfriend. “When you lose control and how good
it feels to cum/…nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong,” he sums up.
Of course Kozelek returns to death. The terrifying “Richard Ramirez”
uses the titular serial killer as a lens for Kozelek to unravel stories about
his home town and a shocking realization during recording process of Benji. “The Saprano’s guy died at
51/That’s the same age as the guy coming to play drums!” Kozelek exclaims with
shock. After “Richard Ramirez”’s dark Modest Mouse guitars end, the warm
instrumentation of “Micheline” enters. Kozelek talks his Grandmother in the
final verse with falsetto harmonies singing “My grammaw, my grammaw.” It could
be hokey but as someone who recently lost a grandmother the slightly sappy
vocals only encase memories in warmth. I’m still in denial about my Gram’s
passing and Kozelek seems to know the feeling.
What makes Benji
strangely wonderful is how much detail is packed into the songs. Kozelek
rambles off the mundane activities of a normal day on “Ben’s My Friend,” eating
crab cakes, feeling disgusted with a restaurant “covered in sports bar shit,”
and seeing part of a Postal Service concert (“Ben” is Ben Gibbard of The Postal
Service). He talks about his aching back and wonders if he looks like a jackass
before calling Ben and saying he’ll have to skip out on the “Backstage hi-five”
but it’s fine since “Ben’s my friend and I know he gets it.” It’s a song made
up of painstaking detail, like every other track here, but this meticulous
process makes Kozelek’s music universal. No one in my family has died from an
exploding aerosol can, but I do know how it feels to lose a family member that
you wish you had known better. My mom never rubbed baking power on my foot to
heal it, but I do know that I’ll bawl like a toddler when I lose my parents. The
songs here don’t offer solace through hope, instead they act like an empathetic
buoy. “I ain’t one to pray/But I’m one to sing and play,”Kozelek puts it. There
aren’t any huge life lessons, no musings on god, just a set of stories that can
resonate with anyone.
