What's Next to the Moon

Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon has appeared on (and spearheaded) tribute albums to John Denver, Modest Mouse, Kris Kristofferson, and now, with What's Next To The Moon, AC/DC's first frontman Bon Scott. What's amazing here is that Kozelek only kept the lyrics unchanged. Everything else was deconstructed, detuned, rearranged and mellowed with melodies that reveal a surprisingly gentle and riddled soul in Bon Scott's songwriting. And with Kozelek's buttery baritone putting the lyrics into an acoustic folk context, he forces us to think of Bon Scott's songs in the same vein as those of Jackson C. Frank, Nick Drake, or Leonard Cohen. If that seems crazy, go straight to "Bad Boy Boogie." Since AC/DC's version is carried by the distorted crunch of a grown man in an English school boy uniform blasting riffs from a wall of Marshall stacks, the original music helps make "Bad Boy Boogie" the puffy-chested warning strut that AC/DC fans know well. But Kozelek's reworking reveals the lyrics in a softer light of sullen sentiments that could have come from a more melancholic muse. It's brilliant not just because this works for every song, but also because it all sounds really truly beautiful.