I’ve documented almost exclusively hip-hop acts in my previous passion blog entries. I’ve also documented almost exclusively positive, or at-least optimistically up-beat artists. It’s time to flip the script for my next post.

Sun Kil Moon is a folk rock group from San Francisco, and in many ways one of the most melancholy band’s I’ve listened to in quite some time. Mark Kozelek is the collection’s lead singer and foremost member.

The act’s name, in itself, is eerily ominous, and requires some explanation. No, it’s not a reference to the sun murdering its celestial neighbor, the moon. Instead, and in my opinion more interesting, it’s the name of a two-time world champion South Korean boxer. One of their song’s is titled Duk Koo Kim, a reference to yet another prized South Korean boxer. Kim died after a heavily touted, nationally televised fight. The boxer’s death deeply touched Kozelek, a big boxing fan in his own right.

In regards to the brutality of the sport, Kozelek said this: “Their backgrounds are extremely harsh and they work very hard to move up in their careers… It hurts when anyone dies young, but when you see the backgrounds of these guys and the path they’ve taken to try to find some light in their lives, it hurts to see them die young.”

As the quote suggests, death is also on Kozelek’s mind.

In his most recent album, “Benji”, someone dies in almost every song. It’s a difficult record to digest, especially in a single sitting. The first song, “Carissa”, documents the death of of a childhood friend, Carissa, who died as a single mother of two when an aerosol can freakishly blew up while taking out the trash. “Yesterday morning I woke up to so many 330 area code calls/I called my mom back and she was in tears and asked had I spoke to my father/Carissa burned to death last night in a freak accident fire,” sings Kozelek in the album’s third verse.

It’s a haunting start, compounded by Kozelek’s even more haunting, baritone voice. And it doesn’t get much easier; the next’s song’s titled “I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love”, and chronicles the artist’s deep connection with his mom. Kozelek sings: “My mother is seventy five/She’s the closest friend I have in my life /Take her from me, I’ll break down and bawl /And wither away like old leaves in the fall.”

But despite the disturbing subject matter and Kozelek’s harrowing voice, there’s a certain comfort the listener assumes when listening to Sun Kil Moon. Kozelek tells a story in each song, and even if it’s about death, it truly entices the unprepared, grabbing them in with little warning.