Album Review: Tiny Cities by Sun Kil Moon

The curious sophomore effort from Mark Kozelek's Sun Kil Moon -- with both Geoff Stanfield and Anthony Koutsos returning from Ghosts of the Great Highway -- is a tribute album to indie rockers Modest Mouse and is entirely made up of songs from their catalogue. That said, Kozelek treats these tunes as if he wrote them himself. The same blend of acoustic and electric guitars exist here as they did on the band's debut, but Kozelek's voice is mixed way up in an otherwise sparse production.

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There was a point in time when the idea of Mark Kozelek recording a full-length album of Modest Mouse covers would have been like the indie rock version of a Marciano-Ali bout. This was about 1997 or ’98, when Jeremiah Green was still drumming for the Issaquah, Washington trio, when their sound remained redolent of the diesel fumes and roadhouses about which they sang, when it wasn’t yet apparent that their best records (This is a Long Drive, The Lonesome Crowded West) were already behind them. This was before Mark Kozelek had repackaged a handful of acoustic AC/DC covers three different ways, when there was a greater degree of latitude to his sound, when he relied less heavily on Spartan – albeit exceptionally beautiful – guitar-and-vocal arrangements.

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