Mark's My Friend (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781086373431)

Beach Sloth's poetry is like if Andy Warhol wrote really banal but somehow profound poetry that crawled under your skin & tickled your brain & made you want to document every moment of your stupid life because he makes it seem weirdly glamorous & special-- iconic. This collection is a surreal experimental journey into the psyche of Mark Kozelek of slowcore/sadcore 90's band, Red House Painters. Beach Sloth takes you inside in a way that makes you wonder about all the people you might have been in alternate realities, and more importantly, how you would be seeing the world through their eyes, creating a strange absurdist dissonance with your own perception as you read the collection. Mark Kozelek is Beach Sloth in another dimension & Beach Sloth is Mark Kozelek in this one, 10/10 (would read to my future children that I'm probably not gonna have).

Leza Cantoral, author of Cartoons in the Suicide Forest & Trash Panda

Mark's My Friend (a.k.a. The Mark Kozelek Songbook, to give it its unofficial title) has a curiosity, like a flashlight playing Mitch Hedberg reinterpretations, leading you thru mundane mechanics of modern, consumerist culture imbued with a willingness to wonder. That wonder wanders "Out in other parts of the world entire governments have been toppled so I could eat this pizza bagel in relative silence." after "Twitter said my password is weak, but I think they're weak as fuck." and before derailing a Costco trip into a morgue to verify your uncle dead you have to "try to be a good consumer since America's economy is mostly fueled by domestic consumption." You don't need to know Mark to get a kick out of his songbook or Beach Sloth's exploration of "a cubicle with walls you decorate with personal, but not too personal, items // so people know you have a life outside the office," & sometimes dreams "about what kind of things I could decorate a cubicle with if I had a cubicle." Thanks Beach Sloth for introducing everyone here.

Jeremiah Walton