4th Annual BEAMAs - Praise for AOTY Nominee BENJI

[Wombi]

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written bymeccalecca...

Benji was the name of a very successful low budget 1974 film about a dog, which was eventually followed up with various sequels. It's also the title of 2014's most talked about album. We all know the stories. We all witnessed the massive tidal wave of hype, and subsequent crash & burn backlash.

Only a few years ago, Mark Kozelek was a cult hero who received passing attention for his current works. Reviews often unfairly judging new works to Red House Painters. His two studio albums released in 2013 received only mild attention, including here on BEA where Mark Kozelek & Desertshore ranks only 329th for the year. Perils From the Sea has been better received here at 28th for the year, but was still far less talked about than Benji.

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"Songs about his family members and friends brought about a personal touch that to many listeners felt like oversharing. But we're living in an era of oversharing, when meals are regularly instagrammed for the world to see."


Benji's wave of praise was built from a rekindled interest in Kozelek as he'd grown significantly more prolific in a past few years. Reading like a book, Kozelek's latest record under the Sun Kil Moon was significantly characterized by confrontation with the unpredictable nature of death, something he touched upon with great success on 2013's "Mariette." Songs about his family members and friends brought about a personal touch that to many listeners felt like oversharing. But we're living in an era of oversharing, when meals are regularly instagrammed for the world to see.

Alongside the diary entry stories were multiple product placements for which Kozelek may or may not have received a hefty sum. Red Lobster and Panera Bread both managed to find their place within the context of Benji.

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"The songs themselves are incredibly sparse, built almost entirely upon Kozelek's standard acoustic chord patterns and dry emotive voice. "


The songs themselves are incredibly sparse, built almost entirely upon Kozelek's standard acoustic chord patterns and dry emotive voice. There's no gimmick, no major breakthrough. The strength of Benji lies almost entirely within Kozelek's masterful ability to tell a story. And no song, no story was as emotionally devastating and relatable to me in 2014 as album opener "Carissa." Within this track he perfectly captures the interconnected nature of humanity, and the consequent effects that death plays upon it.

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[Skinny]

It's a fantastic album, but there are a couple of songs that feel uncharacteristically schmaltzy (the two songs dedicated to his mother and father, respectively), and which subsequently mean that I think this record is less consistently fantastic than other recent releases such as Perils from the Sea and Universal Themes, even if the highs are easily as good as anything from those records ('Carissa', 'Micheline', 'The Song Remains the Same', 'Ben's My Friend'). Also, I feel those two albums in particular are more interesting musically than Benji, which largely saw a return to the acoustic prettiness of April. Still one of my favourite albums of 2014, but not the standout Kozelek release of recent years that it's made out to be. Nice writeup, too.
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[meccalecca]