Mini-review: Mark Kozelek at Neumo’s
I was quite excited about seeing Mark Kozelek play at Neumo’s last night. Unfortunately, building it up ahead of time made a bad show seem even worse. A stripped-down set of his beautiful songs, largely played solo, could have been a wonderful, intimate show. But Kozelek played with his eyes closed, existing entirely within himself and not much interested in the audience — until he became annoyed by their talking during his songs. Now, while the noise level did border on rude, as part of that audience I can hardly blame the people who were talking. The show was boring. Aside from the lack of audience engagement, the arrangements of the songs were monotonous.
In short: the show was an utter disappointment. Were any of you there? Am I being too harsh? Can you find anything good to say about it?
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I thought it was great! I’ve seen Mark perform a couple of times before, though never in such a large, crowded venue, and he’s always been very surly and disgusted no matter the circumstances. That’s just par for the course when it comes to Mark. To me, his bitter, curse-laden stage “banter” is such a contrast to his beautiful voice and compositions that it is quaint and amusing rather than irritating. That said, however, his show last night was musically not up to the standards he had set at previous performances. His guitar playing in particular sounded a little off.
I don’t think I would have cared about his gruffness if the music had really gotten me. But it left me cold — mostly because of the arrangements, I think. Like he said himself: sleep-inducing.