"My back it fucking hurts, but otherwise I'm fine," sings Mark Kozelek, in that inimitable drawl, over that fingerpicked guitar that can still cut through the noise, and slice straight to the bone. It's a big-picture status update for a man who's hit 45, and "Sunshine in Chicago" (from the sprawling new Sun Kil Moon LP Among the Leaves) surveys the songwriter's middle-aged life.Early Red House Painters records — like the aching Down Colorful Hill, now 20 years old— were steeped in the trauma of one's early 20s; in the existential doubts about growing up, the painful on-again/off-again relationships, the lost childhood friends. It makes sense, then, that Kozelek is writing, now, as elegantly about being in your 40s, in the sad resignations, quiet humiliations, and decades of memories.
The song is steeped in the banality of life-on-the-road, being a touring musician at an age long past the rock'n'roll pale. The words reflect that banality with their factual note-taking —"sitting in the Days Inn Hotel in Chicago/Room 222, with the ceiling fan low"; "I took a walk down Lincoln Avenue/got myself a full massage and a manicure, too"— but, when sung by Kozelek, every utterance seems epic. "Sunshine in Chicago," he drawls, in the song's best verse, "makes me feel pretty sad/my band played here a lot in the '90s when we had/lots of female fans, and, fuck, they all were cute/now I just sign posters for guys in tennis shoes."
It's straight-up funny, of course, but in this context it sounds loaded with sadness, with regret. Much of that's due to the tone of the song, which reminds me of the nostalgic melancholia of Kozelek's greatest-ever song: Red House Painters' "Have You Forgotten," even rhyming "name" with "name" as he once, then, rhymed "nice" with "nice." But maybe that's because "Sunshine in Chicago" can only put you in a reflective mood, and, then, the past is sure to fold back on you.
Sun Kil Moon, "Sunshine in Chicago"
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