I Also Want to Die in New Orleans

In the phase that followed his 2014 landmark album Benji, songwriter Mark Kozelek's work under the Sun Kill Moon banner slowly grew from gentle indie rock into something closer to durational spoken word pieces. The storytelling style solidified on that excellent album opened the floodgates for subsequent volumes of seemingly unedited semi-poetic ruminations underscored by repetitive grooves that often felt secondary. Over the course of I Also Want to Die in New Orleans' seven songs (which can run as long as 23-minute album closer "Bay of Kotor"), Kozelek's lyrics get into minuscule details about a weekend at his cabin, his political views, a confusing recording session, the lamb he ate on a European tour, and more. Sometimes this can feel like verbatim transcriptions of conversations, or play-by-play retellings of what Kozelek did on any given day. The record is set apart from other Sun Kill Moon albums that preceded it by its jazzy inflections and contributions from saxophonist Donny McCaslin and drummer Jim White, who add color to the tunes. On "Day in America," Kozelek even spends six minutes recounting a story about jamming in the studio on a riff he didn't know was a Bill Evans composition, sometimes drifting into thoughts about school shootings and high school memories as the band supports him with lilting, jazz-informed instrumentation. ~ Fred Thomas