Three years after the resplendently sorrowful Benji – Mark Kozelek’s apotheosis, 20 years in, as a songwriter-cum-barstool-storyteller – comes this 130-minute stream-of-conscious brain dump, delivered over dreamy grooves driven by ex-Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. The obsessions (death, boxing, mass murder, indie-rock inside baseball) feel more obsessive; the diaristic style more diaristic (“May 28th, 12:58 A.M., 2016,” he intones on “Butch Lullaby,” a requiem for a fellow traveller). Sometimes it drags, hypnotically or solipsistically, then a line – about the Orlando shootings, or Bowie’s death – snaps things back into dazzling, desperate, furious focus. Taking its place alongside recent work-in-progress-style releases by Kanye and Kendrick, it’s an epic for our unfiltered moment. 

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