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Apr 2, 2014Kozelek replicates the rhythm of our lives, the tricks of memory, and the portents we later find in seemingly banal moments.
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MojoMar 21, 2014It sounds wonderful. [Apr 2014, p.96]
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Q MagazineMar 18, 2014Not his most graceful, but certainly his most strikingly personal, Benji is another colourful stop on Kozelek's glorious journey into the light. [Apr 2014, p.119]
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Mar 12, 2014There's sex, drugs, crab cakes, and people you've never met and never will, including James Gandolfini and the children of Newtown, Conn., but their presence devastates nonetheless.
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Feb 26, 2014Benji contains some of the most evocative songs about mortality and youth that have ever been written.
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Feb 26, 2014Benji would have worked better as a series of EPs, playing to Kozelek's strength as a songwriter of certain stylistic preferences.
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MagnetFeb 21, 2014Benji isn't for everyone--what great albums are?--but it's a career-defining statement by a brilliant songwriter. [No. 106, p.59]
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Feb 21, 2014A record whose main theme may be death, but whose power comes from Kozelek’s vivid celebration of life.
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Feb 20, 2014Benji, Mark Kozelek’s sixth album as Sun Kil Moon, is as abrasive as Pharmakon, as hauntingly emotive as Dean Blunt, and as disorienting as Oneohtrix Point Never.
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Feb 19, 2014It encourages you to empathise with the subjects of the songs, and therefore adds some light to the melancholy. It scores highly because it weaves all these scenarios and tales over subtle yet richly varied music. For Mark Kozelek this is yet another career highlight.
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Feb 18, 2014This time round, the humour is more subtle but the observations on life, and increasingly death, are no less keen.
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Feb 14, 2014Kozelek is a songwriter operating with audacity and confidence, composing wry and forthright confessionals that investigate areas of everyday darkness and despair too rarely explored in popular song.
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Feb 12, 2014Kozelek’s sixth project under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, Benji, is his most intimate work yet, thoroughly documenting definitive moments that marked his past and continue to haunt his present.
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Feb 11, 2014Kozelek’s rich, detailed lyrics here are revelatory, and the way he delivers them, in his sad, low, heartrending baritone, is nothing short of entrancing.
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Feb 11, 2014Folk singer Mark Kozelek's remarkable sixth album as Sun Kil Moon feels less like a collection of songs than a series of eulogies delivered in real time.
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Feb 10, 2014Benji is strong, cultish stuff, full of its own stink, full of stories about death and much, much smaller things; the stanzas are long and the yarns circular.
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Feb 10, 2014It isn't easy listening, akin to catching up with an over-sharing friend going through troubled times, but the stories are sad, funny and surprising, and the rewards are plentiful.
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Feb 10, 2014It can be, and often is, dizzying to unpack the poetry, but it’s probably exactly the point from a brilliant, grieving mind full of verses, desperate to release them.
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Feb 10, 2014The sparse musical arrangements and haunting production only serve to heighten the album’s intimacy and ultimately render it a masterpiece of reflection and introspection, destined to be played on repeat in scores of late-night, tired, and lonely rooms.
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Feb 10, 2014His hardcore following will no doubt celebrate it abundantly. Given its willful indulgence, however, others may find it a tipping point in the other direction.
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Feb 10, 2014Kozelek, it seems, has nothing left to hide, or lose: the effect is utterly riveting.
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Feb 7, 2014One of the truest, wisest albums you’ll ever hear.
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Feb 7, 2014Benji is the sound of an artist giving his heart to his fans and saying, “Do with it what you will.” That kind of vulnerability is a rare quality in the music business and as such, should be revered.
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Feb 6, 2014Making pain sound pretty and poetic is a tough tightrope to walk, but Kozelek once again takes all the right steps.
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Feb 6, 2014This guy has written 40-plus albums of material, so it's saying something that Benji is one of his more challenging listens.
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Feb 4, 2014Kozelek’s lack of reservation here is something to be begrudgingly admired, as his willingness to make yet another album that is solely for himself and those obsessive fans who want all the gory details of his past. For the rest of the world, there’s not much here to make any real connection with.
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UncutFeb 3, 2014Benji is brutally sad, which may prove a deal-breaker for anyone who appreciated the comparatively light Among the Leaves, but it never feels gratuitous or exploitative. [Mar 2014, p.84]
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Feb 3, 2014Benji sounds more like Kozelek relating events instead of crafting them, which makes the continuity and reflexivity of the record feel both uncanny and the work of protracted genius.
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Feb 3, 2014On Benji, and even more particularly on some of the live versions featured on the additional disc that accompanies the first ten thousand copies, Mark Kozelek is at least as piercing and persuasive as in his best output over the last two decades.
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Feb 3, 2014Overall, your enjoyment of this album will depend on your patience and appreciation for Kozelek's idiosyncrasies. Sometimes he pulls it off wonderfully, and other times listeners might wish he'd left a little more to the imagination.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 122 out of 135
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Mixed: 9 out of 135
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Negative: 4 out of 135
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Feb 11, 2014
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Feb 28, 2014
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Mar 23, 2014