Sun Kil Moon

Sun Kil Moon is the increasingly experimental folk-rock project of singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek. Originally composed of Kozelek and the members of his previous band, indie rockers Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon were launched in San Francisco in 2002. The band were named after Korean boxing star Sung Kil Moon, and their stately 2003 debut, Ghosts of the Great Highway, features a gripping trilogy of tracks devoted to other boxing legends. Beginning with his critically acclaimed Benji (2014), a laceratingly powerful monument to death and self-examination, Kozelek acquired a penchant for long-form monologues. Subsequent Sun Kil Moon albums, up to and including 2021’s Lunch in the Park, focused on ever more raspy spoke-sung soliloquies—consisting of riffs on Kozelek’s favourite writers (especially Henry Miller and John Fante), blow-by-blow accounts of earlier performances, seemingly impromptu political rants and the sort of banter other artists might reserve for between-song onstage interludes—often accompanied by stylised hip-hop beats.