Tiny Cities

Review by Thom Jurek From Allmusic.com

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. Shimmering acoustic rock and country meld and wind together on “Neverending Math Equation,” and “Space Travel Is Never Boring.” The slow, off-waltz time of “Jesus Christ Was an Only Child” is, in a way, the hinge piece of a recording that deals with memory, childhood, and the emerging of a fragmented person built from these experiences. The allegorical tone of the tune suggests affinity, difference, and the small ways in which what we were taught when we were young opens up spaces in us where we can encounter the world. “Four Fingered Fishermen” acknowledges this with its small strolling blend of acoustic guitars and Kozelek’s iteration of his witness of those different than himself.