SUFJAN STEVENS: SEVEN SWANS (2004)
1) All The Trees Of The Field
Will Clap Their Hands; 2) The Dress Looks Nice On You; 3) In The Devil's
Territory; 4) To Be Alone With You; 5) Abraham; 6) Sister; 7) Size Too Small;
8) We Won't Need Legs To Stand; 9) A Good Man Is Hard To Find; 10) He Woke Me
Up Again; 11) Seven Swans; 12) The Transfiguration; 13*) I Went Dancing With My
Sister; 14*) Waste Of What Your Kids Won't Have.
General verdict: A generic roots-pop
album with nice soporific effects.
You will not find a review of this album
anywhere that does not discuss its Christian symbolism, and you will find very
few reviews of it that do not expressly and explicitly focus on its Christian
symbolism, bypassing just about everything else. Seems like the average
reviewer, before anything else, asks him/herself the question: «Should I
ridicule this guy for believing in Christ and making a Christian folk record,
or should he be redeemed for the indie-styled mix of intelligence, honesty, and
passion displayed therein?» — and then proceeds to the predictable answer.
Because, you see, the average Christian is a sick nut or a redneck, but some
Christians are better than others, as long as they direct their spirituality in
the right direction. «Good boy, Sufjan!» critics say, «have yourself an A+ for
directing your spirituality in the right direction!»
Personally, I have no problems at all with
religious imagery in the lyrics, no problems with any artist embracing any sort
of faith, even Satanism, as long as this helps the music convey a powerful,
passionate message that sweeps your feelings off their feet, regardless of your
own beliefs and values. And it is also quite clear that Sufjan Stevens never
was and never will be your average Christian rocker, borrowing and chewing up truisms
from the Bible and setting them to generic Southern rock chord patterns.
Whether his own Biblical impressions are truly interesting and enlightening
will ultimately depend on the listener: sometimes he limits himself to
reminding us of certain important timechecks in the source (ʽAbrahamʼ; ʽThe
Transfigurationʼ), sometimes he makes up his own apocalyptic visions — the
title track, for instance, introduces "seven swans" as a harbinger of
doom, which is curious considering the near-total lack of any swan imagery in
the Bible itself — and sometimes he mixes religious concerns with his personal
life experience, meaning that there is plenty of stuff to analyze if you feel
like analyzing, or if you think that anybody named Sufjan is automatically
entitled to life-changing mystical experiences and are getting yourself ready
to become an adept.
Anyway, it's okay, there is nothing wrong with
trying to pull up some roots and give them a 21st century boy kind of twist.
What bothers me is not the conceptual framework of the album, but the simple
fact that, even much more so than its predecessor, it is deadly, deadly, deadly
dull: 46 minutes (53 if you count the extra two bonus tracks on the 7"
disc) of slowly tickling, mildly pleasant monotony.
If you want to understand how the heck can this
guy be so insanely productive, Seven
Swans, due to its stripped-down nature, provides a good answer. Almost each
of these tracks is a slow, conservative groove that consists of exactly one
melodic line repeated over and over and over — and it's not even as if the
melodic line itself were tremendously original; no, most of the time it is a
fairly familiar pattern or variation that you have, no doubt, witnessed on a
million folk or country albums. Any professional folkie could have come up with
the entire musical backbone for this album in one single day, maybe less. The
only song that has some sort of development is ʽSisterʼ, and that is only
because of the decision to include an electric guitar solo that precedes the
main vocal theme, making the whole thing slightly Neil Young-ish in approach.
Other than that, everything is terribly static; the only saving grace is that
most of the tracks are relatively short. Add to this Sufjan's usual manner of singing
— the exact same expression at every moment of any given track — and voilà, the recipe for eternal slumber is
ready.
«But wait!», you say, «what about the
atmosphere?» Sure enough, there'd be no Sufjan Stevens without the atmosphere,
and this time around, the atmosphere consists of overdubbing acoustic guitars,
banjos, electric and acoustic pianos, occasional organs, quietly hush-hushed
rhythm sections (often with no drums at all), and soothing harmonies from
Sufjan's friends, the Danielson Famile (Daniel Smith and his
friends-and-relatives). Again, on paper, this might sound like a very nice
formula, and I can see how it could work efficiently even when framing a set of
simple, minimalistic musical themes. The problem is with the themes — I am
genuinely sorry, but the pock-pock puck-puck pick-picking of ʽIn The Devil's
Territoryʼ, even when you repeat it on the banjo and the piano and add a few rippling (and equally robotic) guitar
flourishes in between, is muzak to my ears; and it is also the kind of muzak
that does not sit well with lyrics like "I saw the dragons drying, I saw
the witches whine".
I respect everybody's right to be subdued and
dazzled by the quasi-epic nature of something like the title track — because,
at least nominally, it features some
sort of crescendo, beginning humbly and meekly with just a stuttering banjo and
then, four minutes later, joined by crashing drums, forcefully battered
electric pianos, and shrill falsetto harmonies. This is Sufjan's personal take
on The Revelation: first he recounts his version of the vision, and eventually
he gets around to the Big Climactic Moment when, you know, the Lord announces
to him that he is the Lord. And the Big Climactic Moment is presented in an
original and «classy» manner — I admit that electric pianos and prolonged falsetto
notes are not everybody's idea of a grand finale. Unfortunately, they are not
everybody's idea for a good reason: it isn't a very good idea. Intellectually, perhaps, yes, it is
interesting to see the conception of the Apocalypse so thoroughly cleansed of its
terrifying imagery and pretty much pressed into Sufjan Stevens' Patented
Dollhouse. But feelings-wise, the song just consists of four minutes of limp
banjo picking, followed by two more minutes of soft baroque-country with big
drums.
As usual, then, this is one more triumph of
style over substance. The man does not even seem to be trying to write a rootsy
melody that would stir up deep feelings when played on an acoustic guitar, à la ʽBlackbirdʼ or ʽNever Going Back
Againʼ — he simply picks out random patterns from the folk / bluegrass / country
textbook, and proceeds to «ennoble» them with non-banal (but very blandly
delivered) lyrics and pretty ear-candy overdubs. As far as I'm concerned, the
whole thing is entirely worthless.
"Because, you see, the average Christian is a sick nut or a redneck"
ReplyDeleteHmm, hoping this is sarcasm, because otherwise Chaucer, Michelangelo, Pascal, Descartes, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, John Milton, Dostoevsky, Bach, Mozart, Handel, T.S. Eliot, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Arvo Part, and Wordsworth would like to have a word with you...
Because they are so average, right?
DeleteGeorge is being sarcastic, and not at all subtlely.
DeleteI do urge you to read the ENTIRE paragraph attentively.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a second to realize George was writing from the perspective of the "modern critic" and not himself. Not that we don't have our sick nutty moments, and we are largely an Appalachian crowd...
DeleteRaffi for grown-ups
ReplyDelete"your average Christian rocker, borrowing and chewing up truisms from the Bible and setting them to generic Southern rock chord patterns." If I didn't know better, I'd say you were listening to Third Day.
ReplyDelete"your average Christian rocker, borrowing and chewing up truisms from the Bible and setting them to generic Southern rock chord patterns."
ReplyDeleteIf I didn't know better, I'd think you were listening to Third Day.
Then again, that would imply TD actually borrows from the Bible. :o
Delete