Mark Kozelek has a knack for redefinition. One of the mainstays of his career is the cover song, in which a singer puts his/her own spin on another’s tune. We’ve seen about a billion of these – Rock and jazz were practically built on song thievery – but no one has really done it quite like Kozelek. Like early jazz men, Kozelek takes a song and renders it virtually unidentifiable. The jazzbos did this through soloing – they used a basic melody and spiraled it out into oblivion and back. The Koz acts like he wrote it himself. What’s Next to the Moon is an entire album of AC/DC covers, but you’d probably never know unless 1) someone told you or 2) you already knew the songs. He turned Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” into an eleven-minute monster of a song. He made me listen to John Denver over and over and over again.

Some of the most remarkable moments of Kozelek’s cover career, though, are when he covers himself, which he does with a bizarre passion. Many artists are so single-minded that they seem to worship their own songs, building and molding them until they are absolutely perfect, and then they stand back and look in awe. This is it, they think. The clay is in the kiln. Kozelek’s clay, however, never seems to set up completely. The songs slip into new tunings, new chords, go from acoustic to electric and back again, move from blissful country to mandolined-out madness to sadcore masterpiece. He’s not just rerecording his songs; he’s recreating them.

Take “Salvador Sanchez,” from Ghosts of the Great Highway by Koz’s band Sun Kil Moon. Lyrically, the song appears twice on the very same album, once as “Salvador Sanchez” and once as “Pancho Villa.” Though they share the same lyrics, the two versions are as different as night and day. “Salvador” is big and brash and solid, like its boxer namesake. “Pancho” is a dusty Mexican epic, fitting for the folk hero Villa. Putting two versions of one song on a single album is gutsy but it pays off big time. The album would be diminished if only one version made the cut.

Or take the controversial case of “Have You Forgotten.” The song makes its first appearance on the Red House Painters album Songs for a Blue Guitar, as an airy country-folk love song. But it also shows up on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack (the movie itself a cover of sorts of the movie Abre Los Ojos, featuring another “versus” moment: Penelope Cruz played the same character in both) as a chiming and ringing guitar epic. Kozelek scholars have debated for years the merits and superiority of each song; in the end, again, both are indispensable.

So who wins in the Kozelek vs. Kozelek Battle Royale? Well that part, at least, is easy: we do.

AC/DC – Bad Boy Boogie
Mark Kozelek – Bad Boy Boogie (If You Want Blood version)
Mark Kozelek – Bad Boy Boogie (What’s Next to the Moon version)

AC/DC – Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer
Mark Kozelek – Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer (What’s Next to the Moon version)
Mark Kozelek – Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer (live)

John Denver – Around and Around
Mark Kozelek – Around and Around

Paul McCartney & Wings – Silly Love Songs
Red House Painters – Silly Love Songs

Red House Painters – Bubble
Mark Kozelek – Bubble (live on KEXP)

Sun Kil Moon – Salvador Sanchez
Sun Kil Moon – Pancho Villa
Mark Kozelek – Salvador Sanchez/Pancho Villa (live on KEXP)

Red House Painters – Have You Forgotten (Songs version)
Red House Painters – Have You Forgotten (Vanilla Sky version)