Admiral Fell Promises

This is Mark Kozelek and Sun Kil Moon’s nylon-string guitar album. Taking its inspiration from the mood of classical albums from Segovia, Liona Boyd and Julian Bream, Admiral Fell Promises explores Kozelek’s years of touring with songs that touch on the places he has repeatedly visited. Like all Kozelek material — as Red House Painters, solo, or Sun Kil Moon — the songs explore the emotions behind the settings. Kozelek isn’t a tour guide but a poet putting his personal experiences and impressions to music. Songs such as “Alesund,” a Norwegian seaport town, “Sam Wong Hotel,” a hotel in San Francisco, “Third and Seneca,” a hotel in Seattle, and “Australian Winter” bring a change of scenery to Kozelek’s majestic melodies and private ruminations. These songs are not epics, but quiet odes to an era when travel was not so dominated by technology, when one’s private thoughts were given the space necessary to flourish. It’s an album that deserves no copyright date, as it sounds as special and unusual today as it will several decades from now.