Mark Kozelek and Sean Yeaton – Yellow Kitchen – Album Review by Killian Laher

This month’s album release from Mark Kozelek sees the awkward artist team up with Sean Yeaton, bass player with Parquet Courts.  As with Kozelek’s most recent releases, Kozelek sticks to lyrics, once again done in a diary entry/stream of consciousness style, with Yeaton providing the music.

Any hope of a listenable release is dispelled within the first 30 seconds of opener Time To Destination.  Some vaguely electronic atonal music introduces Kozelek droning on about the US presidential election, how he doesn’t write songs like he used to in 1992, and generally lamenting the music business.  No Christmas Like This continues in a very similar vein with silly lyrics about eating too much chocolate, colonoscopies and various inanities.  And it doesn’t improve much from here, not even the human ring tone sounds of I’m Still In Love With You, the banal encounter in a pharmacy detailed in Somebody’s Favourite Song, or the dog yelping imitation over dull electronica in the 12 minute Daffodils can rescue this album.  The one saving grace is the sweet, melodic The Reasons I Love You , which even Kozelek’s lyrics and croaky singing can’t entirely ruin.  And its a digestible three and a half minutes long.

Mercifully there are only six songs here, and no lyric sheet.  The album ends up sounding like one long drawn out song, and not a good one.  This is mostly pretty terrible stuff, hard to see what, if anything, Parquet Courts fans will make of this.  As for Kozelek?  He’s surely losing fans with sub-par release after sub-par release.  Or just having a laugh at them as he disappears up his own hole.  It’s just sad that somebody who wrote some of the most sensitive, evocative songs of his generation is pissing about doing this.

Album stream here.

Track List

1. Time To Destination
2. No Christmas Like This
3. I’m Still In Love With You
4. Somebody’s Favourite Song
5. The Reasons I Love You
6. Daffodils