Last week, Mark Kozelek seemingly joked that he’d written a song called “War on Drugs: Suck My Cock.”
“I challenge War On Drugs to let me join them onstage and play a hilarious song I’ve written called ‘War On Drugs: Suck My Cock/Sun Kil Moon: Go Fuck Yourself’ at the Fillmore, October 6,” Kozelek wrote in on his website (in a post that seems to have since been deleted), “provided they let me handle the beer commercial lead guitar.”
He wasn’t joking. Kozelek released the song to his Sun Kil Moon website at midnight EST, presumably right before The War on Drugs took the stage at its sold-out show at The Fillmore in San Francisco. In addition to repeatedly inviting the Philadelphia band to “suck my cock,” he talks about the Sun Kil Moon Hopscotch performance where he called the crowd “fuckin’ hillbillies.” (He’s still selling T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan.)
The War on Drugs dudes, Kozelek concedes, are “pretty nice,” but “definitely the whitest fuckin’ band I’ve ever heard.” “Sounded like basic John Fogerty rock,” he sings, and, later: “The War on Drugs loves John Mellencamp.” Also: “Bridge-and-tunnel people love them some War on Drugs.” Burn, yo.
The song is actually, as Kozelek claimed it would be, kind of hilarious — whether it’s intentional or because it paints Kozelek as an increasingly crochety, curmudgeonly dude. For instance, he follows up following up a line about The War on Drugs’ “beer commercial lead guitar” by yelping “Wait, there’s more!” and deploying a harmonized dual-guitar line. After needling the band with “To make three albums, took ’em nine fuckin’ years!,” a canned audience applauds.
It’s not all tongue-in-cheek: He lashes out at Indyweek writer Allison Hussey with the particularly vituperative couplet “Someone got offended and wrote a piece of crap / Some spoiled bitch rich kid blogger brat.” Not cool, Kozzy.
The War on Drugs, meanwhile, have yet to respond with a song called “Sun Kil Moon: Go Fuck Yourself.” I’d pay to hear that one.
Stream the song from Sun Kil Moon’s website, or download it from Pitchfork.