By Adam Vincent
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
12/02/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

12/02/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Monday, December 2, 2019

ACROSS
1 Peruvian home
5 German 
philosopher 
who wrote “The 
Phenomenology 
of Spirit”
10 Microsoft Surface 
competitor
14 Chopped down
15 Amazon assistant
16 Italia’s capital
17 Imperfection
18 *Lucrative 
business
20 Mai __: cocktail
22 Hard to erase, as 
markers
23 *Medieval 
entertainer
26 Ave. and tpk.
27 Hard to believe
28 Word with York or 
Jersey
30 In shape
31 Forgetful moment
35 First part of a play
39 Doing as told, in 
the military ... or 
what the starts of 
the answers to 
starred clues can 
literally have?
43 Mario Kart 
console, initially
44 “__, but no cigar”
45 Pencil eraser, 
e.g.
46 Christen, as a 
knight
49 Hurry up
51 ISP option
54 *Hostel audience?
58 How chops or 
ribs are served
60 That girl
61 *Comedian’s 
suppliers
63 Modern in-flight 
amenity
66 Earl __ tea
67 Etsy’s biz, e.g.
68 Supply-and-
demand sci.
69 Cravings
70 With a long face
71 Stink

DOWN
1 Campus eatery, 
for short
2 Guns N’ Roses 
frontman Rose

3 Slow-moving 
coastal critter
4 Bothersome 
browser apps
5 __ and eggs
6 Slip out to tie the 
knot
7 Heredity units
8 Apply, as 
pressure
9 Joes who aren’t 
pros
10 Persia, now
11 Rod for stirring 
a fire
12 Change for the 
better
13 Pub game
19 Former filly
21 Prefix for 
Venice’s country
23 Perp’s 
restraints
24 Bagel flavoring
25 “The Hunger 
Games” star, to 
fans
29 Roll of bills
32 Insta upload
33 NBC late-night 
weekend staple, 
familiarly
34 Freudian focus
36 Heart of the rink

37 More faithful
38 13-digit pub. 
codes
40 ’60s hallucinogen
41 Org. providing 
workplace safety 
posters
42 Attain
47 Lyft competitor
48 Bottle-fed tykes
50 Backyard chef’s 
stick
51 Pooch, to a tyke

52 Drum type
53 Three-star mil. 
officer
55 Panna __: Italian 
dessert
56 Work with dough
57 Danger
59 “I-” rds., e.g.
62 Crafty
64 Hardly a friend
65 Confident 
crossword 
solver’s choice

6A — Monday, December 2, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

If anyone’s lyrical progression throughout the decade 
warrants a chronological volume, it’s Mark Kozelek’s. “Nights 
of Passed Over II” collects the words from the singer-
songwriter’s prolific musical career over the past 10 years. 
The book picks up where his first previous collection left off. 
The cutoff point between the two anthologies 
may at first seem arbitrary, though Kozelek’s 
decision to begin in 2010 makes “Nights” 
an excellent documentation of arguably the 
most controversial lyrical progression of the 
decade. Love it or hate it, the collection is the 
best showcase of the artist’s singular lyrical 
journey.
Kozelek got his start in the late ’80s as 
the lead singer and songwriter in Red House 
Painters. The group was as close to a boy 
band as a band could get and still be beloved 
by future Elliott Smith fans. Kozelek left 
Red House Painters and started releasing 
songs under the name Sun Kil Moon in 2002. 
If any of those original Red House Painters 
fans were still on board by 2010, it’s hard to 
imagine they’re still here a decade later.
This 
anthology 
shows 
Kozelek’s 
contentious lyrical shift from traditional 
poetry laden with metaphor to increasingly 
literal accounts of his daily life. After a 
brief prologue, the book begins with Sun 
Kil Moon’s Admiral Fell Promises. The 
traditional poetic style of the lyrics sticks out 
when compared with the following works, 
but the contrast makes provides a nice pivot 
point. Jumpstarting the change is 2012’s 
Among The Leaves. Lyrics from “Sunshine In 
Chicago” and “I Know It’s Pathetic But That Was The Best 
Night Of My Life” show Kozelek writing episodic accounts of 
experiences during tour. 
It’s hard to say anything about 2014’s Benji — Kozelek’s 
next album — that hasn’t already been said, including the 
lament that there’s nothing left to say. The album showcases 
the power of direct nonfictional storytelling in addressing 
loss. Prompted by his aunt losing her father and daughter in 
two unrelated freak explosions of aerosol cans, the album is 
Kozelek’s tribute to his original home in lower-class Ohio. 
Without instrumentals, not one lyric’s gut punch is lost: “Was 
it even you who mistakenly put flammables in the trash? / Was 

it your kids just being kids? / If so oh the guilt that they will 
carry around forever.” The brilliance of Benji is in its ability to 
focus on diary-like accounts of life when affected by tragedy. 
Even as the lyrics forgo analysis for direct accounts, the 
choice in which stories will be told says everything. Alongside 

each other, the stories lament that humans’ fragile, expiring 
bodies are categorically underqualified to hold the lives that 
permeate through them. 
The lyrics in Universal Themes, when pushed onto paper, 
seem to stray further away from poetry and toward prose. 
But without the heavy subject matter of the preceding Benji, 
the stories feel inconsequential at times. Kozelek allegedly 
spent much of the album writing bored on a film set, and the 
resulting lyrics are about as fun to read as Mark is having 

writing them. “This is My First Day and I’m Indian and I Work 
at a Gas Station” is a highlight. The lyrics read much like the 
title: a long, drawn out account of random life moments. The 
song and all its sporadic lyrics really shouldn’t work, but it’s 
hard not to love something so unflinchingly unique.
2017’s Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood 
should also, not by any means, work. Perhaps it only does due 
to its varied subjects: the 2016 election, the mysterious death 
of Canadian Elisa Lam and gun control (to name a few). By 
this point, the poetry of Admiral has all but disappeared and 
has made room for long, winding prose. Kozelek reads full 
letters from fans or promoters, which are less surprising in 
book form. In theory, 
the last thing the world 
needed was another take 
on 2016 politics. And 
yet, 
Kozelek 
himself 
is 
the 
reason 
these 
long 
diatribes 
stay 
interesting. The appeal 
of 
his 
work 
beyond 
2017 is similar to the 
appeal of blogging. This 
is 
especially 
true 
in 
book form, without the 
varying instrumentation 
with each record. Song 
topics drift further and 
further into Kozelek’s 
daily 
life. 
The 
long, 
dairy-like entries will be 
too much for some. For 
those who have already 
put in the time to get to 
know Kozelek through 
his 
earlier 
releases, 
the records can feel like catching up with a new friend. 
Increasingly, Kozelek’s avoidance of poetry and metaphor 
works to his favor: their presentation with daily subject 
matter would enter melodramatic territory.
One issue of the book’s form that does hurt the experience 

is the lack of true cohesion. The book makes sense as a 
memoir which doubles as an account of artistic progression. 
However, there’s a certain amount of whiplash from putting 
the disparate albums together. Without walling off each 
album, there’s too much proximity between a lyrics like “she 
wanted love like anyone else … she had dreams like anyone 
else” and a song called “Suck My Cock War On Drugs.”
The latter song came from one of Kozelek’s rants, which 
vary from defending transgender rights to critiquing music 
bloggers. The over-aggression of some of 
these songs is established by Kozelek’s 
grounding of the majority of them in 
sympathy with the experiences of his friends 
and family. These often come alongside 
the rants, like linking his disdain for San 
Francisco techies with gentrification and 
aggression towards homeless people.
In “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” James 
Murphy highlights the surrealism of popular 
artists like David Bowie: “In my mind he 
was from outer space, like, he’s not a person. 
Like this isn’t a person that would wake up 
and whose foot would hurt because they 
kicked a couch the night before … The best 
you could do is just act like them … But you 
couldn’t be that.” It’s often jarring to find 
art that solely expresses themes contained 
in everyday life. Perhaps because popular 
artists don’t lead “normal” lives, or perhaps 
because people aren’t interested in the ones 
that do. 
But daily life outside of tragedy also 
should have its place in the artistic canon. 
By removing the artistic musical style, the 
bare lyrics depict daily life in a tone that 
reflects what it actually feels like for most 
people. Many people will find these lyrics 
self-indulgent. And perhaps they are. But 
it also allows Kozelek to touch on important subjects that 
wouldn’t otherwise be addressed. Life isn’t lived in the 
grand, memorable outliers expressed in most art. For the 
most part, it’s lived in the moments in between them. “Nights 
of Passed Over II” is a progression of an artist learning to 
express those moments.

Mark Kozelek chronicles decade of lyrical progression

BOOK REVIEW

LUKAS TAYLOR
Daily Arts Writer

Nights of Passed Over II

Mark Kozelek

Carlo Verde Records

October 27, 2019

CARLO VERDE RECORDS

South Africa (as I covered in a previous profile of House 
producer Black Coffee) has cemented its place as one of the 
world’s most innovative producers and exporters of dance music. 
By now, the particular brand of deep house championed by the 
aforementioned Black Coffee as well as producers such as Da 
Capo are mainstays at clubs pretty much everywhere. One of 
the newest and most exciting waves of music coming from the 
country, in particular the coastal metropolis of Durban, is a 
genre called gqom. 
Gqom, roughly pronounced “qwom” (although it involves a 
click sound present in the Zulu language), is one of those forms 
of brilliant dance music that harkens and 
celebrates an apocalypse or impending 
doom, a far cry from the sunny House of 
an Ibiza dancefloor. A typical gqom track 
builds around only a few elements, typically 
a single synth pattern or mangled sample 
as well as a powerful, decidedly atypical 
4/4 drum pattern. The latter in particular 
creates a lack of stability that gives rise to 
a rather hypnotic and disorienting feeling, 
one unlike any other I’ve ever heard or 
experienced. While UK Garage is notable 
for its rhythmic “pushes,” even it has a very 
solid and noticeable rhythmic core. Gqom, 
on the other hand, features a similar type 
of “broken” beat but with a more intricate 
system of polyrhythms floating in and out 
and interacting with each other all at once. 
The sounds of gqom were discovered 
and developed by teenagers in these 
Durban townships (apparently often using cracked copies of 
FruityLoops production software) and spread in a labyrinthine 
network of music hosting sites, Facebook and WhatsApp groups. 
In some instances, tracks spread without the help of the internet 

by just being played by groups of people out and about or even in 
taxis. With regards to the latter, DJ Lag, one of the genre’s most 
successful practitioners, mentions that “If a track is being played 
in a taxi, you should know that your track is a hit,” since “taxis 
are a symbol of dancing mood, especially taxis that work in the 
heart of Durban. And taxis actually are the heart of Durban 
especially in promoting gqom music.” One of the most intriguing 
and appealing aspects of the genre is the fact it is, for all intents 
and purposes, completely organic and DIY, a rarity in a world of 
industry plants and mega-studios. 
Durban itself is the third largest city in South Africa after 
Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the 
province of KwaZulu-Natal. Like many large South African 
cities, the horrors of apartheid still remain under the surface, 
and many of the “townships” surrounding the city remain, on 
average, much poorer and less developed. 
However, they remain a source of much 
of the new music being produced in the 
countries and provide an invaluable 
audience and party scene for dance music 
producers. Many producers note that the 
inherent darkness of their music reflects 
the uneasy tension between the desire to 
celebrate and the poverty, violence and 
lack of opportunity that are widespread in 
the areas they grow up in.
Gqom’s spread outside of South Africa, 
on the other hand, was facilitated in 
largely by a Rome-based DJ named Nan 
Kolè, who helped start a label called Gqom 
Oh! that released a compilation of gqom 
music created in the Durban townships 
for audiences outside of South Africa that 
doesn’t involve navigating the genre’s 
complex, fast-changing online ecosystem. 
Its success has even spawned the birth of new fusions of 
disparate sounds elsewhere in the continent, and points to 
an exciting future in which more unconventional sounds are 
played in clubs around the world.

The deep, dark pleasure of gqom

WORLD MUSIC COLUMN

SAYAN GHOSH
Daily World Music Columnist

GETTY IMAGES

Gqom is one of 
those forms of 
brilliant dance 
music that harkens 
and celebrates 
an apocalypse or 
impending doom

