From Mark Kozelek's living room window, he can see the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Marina and, he points out to Uncut, the Tiburon neighbourhood where Robin Williams killed himself. "It's hard for middle-aged people to see San Francisco taken over by young, Silicon Valley money," he says ...
“There isn’t all the baggage that comes with, ‘This is forever’.”
Jimmy Lavalle, Desertshore, Justin Broadrick, Ben Gibbard? Kozelek on collaborations…
“They do the music, I do the vocals. Jimmy [Lavalle, with whom he made 2013’s Perils From The Sea] and I recorded the entire album with only one phone conversation. It doesn’t get much easier than that. There was talk of him and I doing an EP, but he had a child since then, and you know how it is, he got busy with his things and I got busy with mine. But that guy made music that inspired me to sing at my very best. Maybe someday we’ll do it again.
“With Desertshore [the San Francisco instrumentalists who backed him on an eponymous 2013 set], I would just show up, listen to what they had recorded and write words and melodies on the spot. Easy stuff. When something is a side project, there isn’t all the baggage that comes with, ‘This is forever’. You’re just working on one thing to see how it all turns out.
“Ben [Gibbard, The Postal Service/Death Cab For Cutie frontman] and I will make some music someday, I’m sure. I don’t know how or when. Maybe him on drums, both of us singing and doing overdubs. He’s a great drummer. Justin Broadrick [The British avant-metal musician, best known for Godflesh] and I are working on something, as we can, here and there, as we’re both so fucking busy. It’s going to be something, though, that album. It’ll probably be released in 2016.”