Sufjan Stevens (and others): Planetarium

SUFJAN STEVENS: PLANETARIUM (2017) (w. Bryce Dessner et al.)

1) Neptune; 2) Jupiter; 3) Halley's Comet; 4) Venus; 5) Uranus; 6) Mars; 7) Black Energy; 8) Sun; 9) Tides; 10) Moon; 11) Pluto; 12) Kuiper Belt; 13) Black Hole; 14) Saturn; 15) In The Beginning; 16) Earth; 17) Mercury.

General verdict: This is NOT going down in history as the definitive musical guide to the planets; any old textbook on astronomy is about ten times as exciting.

As early as 2012, Stevens took part in a collaborative project with contemporary classical com­poser Nico Muhly and with Bruce Dessner, guitarist of The National, commissioned by a Dutch concert hall — a conceptual piece about no less than the entire Solar System. After an actual live performance in Amsterdam, the piece lay dormant for five more years before the principal parti­cipants decided to reconvene and (with the final addition of drummer James McAlister) finalize the art piece in a recording studio. The result is Planetarium, an album credited to all four guys at once — but since Sufjan's name comes first on the cover, and also since he sings all the vocals, I am assuming that it belongs in his discography anyway, regardless of the actual percentage of his own melodic themes. And it is hardly likely I will ever tackle Nico Muhly on his own, any­way, although it turns out that I have briefly run into him on occasion — in particular, he had collaborated with the late Antony Hegarty (now known as Anohni) on three of his (as-of-then) records. Besides, the album was deemed important enough to be released on the 4AD label — the unspoken king of all things Cosmic and Transcendental — and that should spell quality.

The concept of the record basically just involves writing an ode to each of the planets (Pluto generously included), as well as the Sun, the Moon, and a few accompanying phenomena for the sake of diversity. In itself, it is simple and elegant and respectable and it has been a whole century anyway since Holst's The Planets, so it is odd that nobody thought of the idea earlier. Lyrically, though, Sufjan barely even touches planetary subjects — mostly, he uses the celestial bodies as starting reference points for all sorts of personal ruminations (for instance, ʽNeptuneʼ refers to "strange waters" and "drowning" and that's about it; ʽMercuryʼ mentions "running off with it all", meaning that Greek mythology matters much, much more to this man than little globes of cosmic dust pointlessly revolving around some silly hot star). But musically, the arrangements are ambitious enough so that you could think of the compositions in... astronomical terms, so to speak. Or, should we say, astrological?

There is but one problem with Planetarium, or, rather, all of its small problems boil down to one big problem. An album like this — a large, 76-minute long musical canvas presuming to connect matters celestial and terrestrial, transcendental and personal — should do one of two things: it should dazzle, or it should not exist, period. Saying «yeah, I've heard this monster of an album that covers the entire Solar System, and it's kinda ok» just feels stupid. You might dislike Holst's Planets and consider them a poor man's crass and pompous attempt to outdo the magnificence of Gustav Mahler — but in the event that you like Planets, you will probably want to close your eyes and get transported away into space at some moment. This is the precise thing that an album like Plane­tarium needs to do to you, too. But does it?

Honestly speaking, apart from Sufjan's voice and lyrics, the music reminds me more of the afore­mentioned Anthony Hegarty. There are plenty of watery, echoey, glib-shaped, keyboard-based ballads here, from ʽNeptuneʼ to ʽMercuryʼ, that are about one hundred percent atmosphere and ultimately depend on whether the singer manages to convert you or not. And then there are the «loud» numbers like ʽJupiterʼ, electronic workouts with heavy use of sampling, Artistic Auto­tune, and overdub-till-you-drop vocal harmonies and keyboard loops. Both approaches eventually combine on ʽEarthʼ (geocentrism in action!), a 15-minute piece that begins as a New Age cascade of smooth-'n'-stately musical winds, then turns into a heavily autotuned prayer, and finally becomes an alien dance number. Not a single one of these parts, not for a single moment, ever feels particularly profound or engaging. If this is the best these guys can come up with to prove the value of ʽEarthʼ to our potentially hostile neighbours in space, expect to be obliterated upon arrival. At best, this track is boring; at worst (particularly when those uglified vocals come in), it is excru­ciating.

I mean, it is not often that a 76-minute long album passes by in such a way that I cannot latch on to a single second of it — heck, I even enjoyed parts of Ayreon's epic enterprises, because they were, well, epic. Corny as hell, sure, but enjoyable the same way as one enjoys one's Star Trek or Clifford Simak. This album demands to be taken much more seriously, but how can you take seriously an album with a ton of autotuned Sufjan Stevens vocals? I can barely take him serious­ly when he's clean! And when you are given clean vocals, other problems surface. ʽPlutoʼ, for instance, slowly builds upwards from a quiet, bubbly, kaleidoscopic texture to a loud orchestral waltz, awash in strings and brass, but the sound is so compressed and flattened that the strings have absolutely no volume / depth to them, and the whole thing feels fake and artificial. I under­stand that they are simply following current trends in production, while at the same time probably thinking of how innovative this whole approach is, but these are ugly trends, and this approach ain't innovative in the slightest.

Since I have no intention of wasting my brains on trying to explain why each of these tracks sucks on an individual basis, I will end this with a slightly warped conclusion: Planetarium is like The Age Of Adz, but with more strings, more Autotune, and more pretense — each of these three points not working in its favor. Oh, yes, and a couple of the songs, such as the stripped down, arpeggio-favoring ʽMercuryʼ, could have fit right in on Carrie & Lowell, too, but for me this is not a plus, as you already know. But if you are a Stevens fan, by all means take note, because, despite the collaborative nature, Planetarium does feel very much like a bona fide Sufjan Stevens album. I mean, I even have no idea what exactly is Bruce Dessner's contribution to the record supposed to be — and I don't even think I want to know.

Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell Live

SUFJAN STEVENS: CARRIE & LOWELL LIVE (2017)

1) Redford (For Yia-Yia And Pappou); 2) Death With Dignity; 3) Should Have Known Better; 4) All Of Me Wants All Of You; 5) John My Beloved; 6) The Only Thing; 7) Fourth Of July; 8) No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross; 9) Carrie & Lowell; 10) Drawn To The Blood; 11) Eugene; 12) Vesuvius; 13) Futile Devices; 14) Blue Bucket Of Gold; 15) Blue Bucket Outro; 16) Hotline Bling.

General verdict: An attempt to make those songs more personal and more cosmic at the same time.

In order to let us know how truly special the Carrie & Lowell experience is to his conscience, Sufjan had one of the shows from the tour recorded, videotaped, and eventually released as his first live album. The title does not lie — this is, indeed, Carrie & Lowell recorded live in its entirety, albeit with the songs in an alternate order, and with a few nods to The Age Of Adz at the end of the show. The idea, however, was not to simply cash in on the critical success, but to emphasize that the intimacy and personality of the C&L songs really only come out properly in a live setting, when the feelings are being directly expressed to somebody, rather than through the hindering medium of the recording studio.

I will be brief, but honest, and, perhaps to the surprise of some of the readers, admit that the idea partially works — the live performances may not be making a much bigger Carrie & Lowell fan out of me, but the unavoidable lack of studio gloss, and particularly the lack of subtly dehumanizing vocal effects, makes the songs more touching, and their protagonist slightly more sympathetic (although I sure wish he'd take that stupid-looking baseball cap off his head while performing). At the same time, there are multiple arrangement changes for particular songs, with extra strings, percussion, and electronics, provided by a large backing band and, again, establishing a stronger bridge between the sparse minimalism of Carrie & Lowell and the psychedelic fuss of The Age Of Adz — like in ʽThe Fourth Of Julyʼ, for instance, which gets a whole brand new Animal Collective-style kaleidoscopic-carnivalesque coda. This, in my opinion, is not necessarily an improvement — but formally, it does present an excuse for the official release of the album.

Rephrasing the above-said, Carrie & Lowell Live is a bit of a contradiction — Sufjan is working at the same time on making these songs even more introspective and psychological, and on expanding their sonic base so that they could be better integrated in his electronic art-pop scheme of things. This culminates at the end, when ʽBlue Bucket Of Goldʼ gradually grows out of its New Age-y shell into a monumental epic, and then gets a twelve-minute «outro» in the form of a post-rockish crescendo, with all the instruments eventually merging into a pile of deafening electro-acoustic noise — nothing we haven't heard before, really, and I would dare say that the crescendo of ʽA Day In The Lifeʼ achieved the same goal in about twenty seconds, but it's not as if Sufjan or his audience were in a hurry, right?

I have absolutely no idea, though, what was the meaning of covering Drake's recent hit ʽHotline Blingʼ as an encore, and with an entirely straight face at that — that Sufjan's idea of humor or something? (You don't need to tell me that he actually likes and endorses the song, my opinion of his artistic integrity is low enough as it is). Things like that only show how thin is the line today between making «bold, but meaningful» artistic moves and ridiculously embarrassing oneself for no reason whatsoever. Anyway, you can always turn the album off before the encore, so we are not going to hold a stupid gaffe like that against the dude. Perhaps it's just the effect of some virus cleverly implanted in the baseball cap.

Finally, I have watched parts of the video, and there is nothing in particular to recommend it over the audio experience — Sufjan's light show and image accompaniment are nothing to lose sleep about, and his own onstage presence is always restrained, so unless you really have the hots for him (he is handsome, isn't he?), it might be just better to listen.

Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell

SUFJAN STEVENS: CARRIE & LOWELL (2015)

1) Death With Dignity; 2) Should Have Known Better; 3) All Of Me Wants All Of You; 4) Drawn To The Blood; 5) Eugene; 6) Fourth Of July; 7) The Only Thing; 8) Carrie & Lowell; 9) John My Beloved; 10) No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross; 11) Blue Bucket Of Gold.

General verdict: Let me just count this review as a sympathy card, and then forget about the whole thing for good.

«Most emotional album I've ever heard», «simple, straightforward, and haunting», «one of the best representations of sadness and grief I've ever experienced», «listening to this is like having someone slowly plunging you in the heart with a knife», «you ever feel like crying... fuck, just listen to this shit», «blissful open wound, washing over the listener like sunlight cascading over little specks of dust» — all of these quotes just taken from the opening page of the RYM review section for this record, where Carrie & Lowell was voted the second best album of 2015 (after Kendrick Lamar, of course) and, as of now, the fifth best album of the 2010s. Even on a purely commercial scale, it managed to match the success of The Age Of Adz, finally stabilizing Sufjan as a viable market force — and gave him his highest charting positions overseas to date. This is an album that made history and almost came close to turning Sufjan Stevens into a household name, and he didn't even have to legitimately sell out to do this.

Well, in a way he did sell out, I suppose: Carrie & Lowell is his (superficially) simplest, most accessible, and most conceptually comprehensible album to date. The man's mother died in 2012, after a turbulent and complicated life of substance abuse, schizophrenia, and abandoning her own child when he was just a year old — she went down to the river, put the baby in an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime... oops, wrong story. Anyway, what can be more understan­dable and empathetic than such a story? A troubled mother abandons her year-old child, goes on to have the darkest period in her life, gets resuscitated by her new match (Lowell Brams, Sufjan's stepdad), reconnects with her offspring, eventually divorces her new partner again, finally dies of cancer, and is remembered by her son in a touching tale of traumas, losses, gains, more losses, grudges, mercies, and forgivenesses. Many of us have similar stories to tell, but most of us aren't artistic enough to tell them in ways that would stand out — most of us are waiting for artists to tell us these stories so we could match them to our own experiences. Right?

Politely, I will not blame Sufjan Stevens for any conceptual mishandlings. There is nothing inherently shameful, or embarrassing, or commercially calculated, about writing a cycle of songs about somebody who was close to you. There is even nothing inherently wrong about making this album really about Sufjan rather than about Carrie — all the songs are expressly centered on the songwriter's own feelings about how these events shaped and influenced his life and nobody else's, and we learn far more about Sufjan Stevens from the songs than we do about the actual Carrie and Lowell, but then again, it is Sufjan Stevens who is the singer-songwriter, not Carrie or Lowell (Lowell is a musician, but of an entirely different type). There is nothing wrong about choosing a quiet, restrained, largely acoustic framework for this experience — naturally, it fits the intended mood and the stated purpose far better than the style of The Age Of Adz.

The only thing that is wrong with this album, as far as I am concerned, is that it is a Sufjan Stevens album — more precisely, that Sufjan Stevens has not chosen, or has not been able, to cease being Sufjan Stevens while he was writing and recording these songs. «But why should he have chosen to do so?», shall you ask, and I will answer: of course he shouldn't have, certainly not in this particular case, not in his most autobiographical / personal / intimate musical expe­rience to date. Sincerity and honesty, the presence of which on this album would be very impolite to doubt, are its primary selling points, ones that are undeniably responsible for 90% of the exalted responses selectively quoted at the beginning of this review. But the same primary selling points also represent the album's main weaknesses — by being himself and nobody else, Sufjan flashingly exposes everything that so strongly bugs me about him.

As is typical of Sufjan, the album has a nice sound. N-I-C-E, as in «enjoyable, pleasant, pleasu­rable, agreeable, delightful, satisfying, gratifying, acceptable, affable» etc. etc. Pretty, soothing acoustic picking all over the place; soft piano patterns; relaxing synthesizer backdrops; hushed, tender, falsetto-oriented vocals that manage to redirect even the most painful of grudges onto paths of sweet forgiveness and love for your sinner neighbor. Not a single second of the record intentionally or unintentionally goads you into thinking, «gee, what an asshole»; not a single moment comes across as jarringly misplaced. From the viewpoint of ritualistic public culture circa 2015, Carrie & Lowell is as immaculate as they come. Even a few of those strategically placed «shocking» lines ("you checked your texts while I masturbated", etc.) come across as moments of disarming honesty rather than rude slip-ups.

Unfortunately, when I want for a piece of art to strike me hard on an emotional level, I typi­cally make the mistake of looking for something deeper than «nice». Having only recently re-listened to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, for instance, for the purposes of re-reviewing it, I find that the three piano chords of ʽMotherʼ pack more gut punch to them than Carrie & Lowell in its entire entirety. Certainly, these are different personalities — there is little reason to compare the turbulent, unstable, spiritually violent Lennon with the calm, soft, microscopically subtle Fran­ciscan serenity of Sufjan Stevens. But as banal as that might sound to people soaked in modern cultural values — turbulence, unstability, spiritual violence tend to make for better art than calmness, softness, and microscopic subtlety; at least, such is my understanding of art, based not only on my personal experience, but also on the general history of art up to the beginning of the 21st century, when the idea that «tranquility is the new rebellion» and «boredom is the new excitement» began gaining traction faster than the spread of neo-conservatism.

Turning to the actual songs on Carrie & Lowell, I find... nothing to turn to, because even after about a half a dozen listens, spread over a one-and-a-half year period, I cannot remember how even a single one of them goes. The only thing I remember now, twenty minutes after the last echoes of echoes of echoes of ʽBlue Bucket Of Goldʼ have vaporized away, is how nice it was. The acoustic picking, the pretty falsetto singing, the reverent / symbolic / heartfelt lyrics, maybe the way he found to make lines like "we're all gonna die" sound like Christopher Robin's lecture to Winnie-the-Pooh... yes, it was pretty. But did that guy really make me care? For himself? For Carrie? For Lowell? For humanity? For my immortal soul? Not really. In order to make me care, as a musician, he should have bothered writing music that would be more interesting and challenging to listen to than this lukewarm set of folk-based patterns, many of which sound exactly the same — and are undistinguishable from just about any folk-based singer-songwriting album written by a 20-year old after a crash course in Donovan, Nick Drake, and (to pick a more recent influence) Belle & Sebastian.

If you have not heard the album yet, all you really need to do to know if you will love it or not is listen to the first minute of the opening number, ʽDeath With Dignityʼ. It's got all the trademarks: folk acoustic guitar, hushed vocals eventually rising to a falsetto mini-climax, lyrics about trying to deal with loss and prostrating oneself in humility, with a few cleverly employed tropes placed along the way ("spirit of silence", "old mare", etc.). Nice? Nice. Stunning? Way too nice for me to have the potential to be stunning. Now expand this to 43 minutes and 35 seconds, and you are pretty much set up. Yes, sometimes the tempo will slow down, sometimes the guitar will be replaced by piano, sometimes production values will drop to lo-fi, sometimes the vocals will be brought higher in the mix, but this won't change anything on any major level, and it makes any discussion of any following songs completely irrelevant.

One might make the old argument about how it's all in the lyrics, and how a proper feel for Carrie & Lowell is impossible without going into detail about all the complex metaphors made by Steven — after all, many of the songs are verbally written as love songs, bringing up the old ʽJuliaʼ pattern (that song where Lennon was intentionally mixing up his feelings for his deceased mother and Yoko, remember?), and have deeply-going psychological implications that might be quite interesting to elicit and analyze if you got nothing better to do. But here, too, I find myself too far gone — too deeply spoiled by singer-songwriters like Dylan or Leonard Cohen who, at their best, were not above sacrificing the musical aspect of their work for a simple combination of intellectual lyrics and monotonously placating atmosphere. Stevens, on the contrary, with this album prefers to align himself with this new generation of Musical Terrormalism, people like Justin Vernon and Phil Elverum, who are happy enough to paint static sonic pictures of their teared-up or stone-cold faces because, apparently, nobody was bold enough to do that before them, so that alone should make their contribution to world culture count big.

Granted, Carrie & Lowell is at least not a bad album — it is miles more listenable and enjoyable than anything by Bon Iver, or that abysmally overrated Mount Eerie record that people went nuts for in 2017. Sufjan is not a professional whiner or a professional ice queen, and he doth play his instruments, and a few of these songs, now that I force myself to penetrate them real hard, have ideas that may eventually come across as hooks (provisionally, I'd say the chorus of ʽFourth Of Julyʼ might eventually qualify). But as far as I am concerned, it does not really stand out all that much from the typical pool of Sufjan Stevens albums — just because he has chosen a more down-to-earth topic does not automatically jump-kick it onto a different level — and the fact that many people seriously find themselves teary-eyed and spiritually devastated by listening to this pretty musical pastiche is just one more of those strange, strange (or, perhaps, not so strange) things about this decade that I find so hard to justify.

Sufjan Stevens: Silver & Gold

SUFJAN STEVENS: SILVER & GOLD (2012)

Gloria: 1) Silent Night; 2) Lumberjack Christmas / No One Can Save You From Christ­mases Past; 3) Coventry Carol; 4) The Midnight Clear; 5) Carol Of St. Benjamin The Bearded One; 6) Go Nightly Cares; 7) Barcarola (You Must Be A Christmas Tree); 8) Auld Lang Syne.

I Am Santa's Helper: 1) Christ The Lord Is Born; 2) Christmas Woman; 3) Break Forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light; 4) Happy Family Christmas; 5) Jingle Bells; 6) Mysteries Of The Christmas Mist; 7) Lift Up Your Heads Ye Mighty Gates; 8) We Wish You A Merry Christmas; 9) Ah Holy Jesus; 10) Behold! The Birth Of Man, The Face Of Glory; 11) Ding-A-Ling-A-Ring-A-Ling; 12) How Shall I Fitly Greet Thee?; 13) Mr. Frosty Man; 14) Make Haste To See The Baby; 15) Ah Holy Jesus; 16) Hark! The Herald Angels Sing; 17) Morning (Sacred Harp); 18) Idumea (Sacred Harp); 19) Eternal Happiness Or Woe; 20) Ah Holy Jesus (A Capella); 21) I Am Santa's Helper; 22) ʽMaoz Tzurʼ (Rock Of Ages); 23) Even The Earth Will Perish And The Universe Give Way.

Christmas Infinity Voyage: 1) Angels We Have Heard On High; 2) Do You Hear What I Hear?; 3) Christmas In The Room; 4) It Came Upon The Midnight Clear; 5) Good King Wenceslas; 6) Alphabet St.; 7) Particle Physics; 8) Joy To The World; 9) The Child With The Star On His Head.

Let It Snow!: 1) I'll Be Home For Christmas; 2) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town; 3) The Sleigh In The Moon; 4) Sleigh Ride; 5) Ave Maria; 6) X-mas Spirit Catcher; 7) Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!; 8) A Holly Jolly Christmas; 9) Christmas Face.

Christmas Unicorn: 1) Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas; 2) It Came Upon A Midnight Clear; 3) Up On The Housetop; 4) Angels We Have Heard On High; 5) We Need A Little Christmas; 6) Happy Karma Christmas; 7) We Three Kings; 8) Justice Delivers Its Death; 9) Christmas Unicorn.

General verdict: Another confusing walk between heartful reverence and creative irreverence.

Well, he might have been somewhat slacking with full-fledged original concept albums through the second half of the 2000s, but it turns out that one thing Sufjan Stevens held on to on a very steady basis was his Christmas schedule — from 2006 to 2010, not a single December passed without a new mix of traditional and original compositions that not only confirmed the man's commitment, but also, in a way, served as a diary of his own musical (and, of course, SPIRITual) evolution. At first, they were produced in a very crude manner and distributed for fans on CDrs or something, but in 2012, all five EPs got officially packaged and numbered releases — and then were also put together in a single mammoth package, which also included an 80-page booklet that elaborately presented Sufjan's ideological stance on Christmas, plenty of artsy junk for the modern Christian's consumption, and a naked chocolate Santa having rough sex with a couple of chocolate reindeer (well, actually, no, this is still in the plans for future boxsets).

I am not even going to pretend to be capable of an honestly detailed and meticulous review here: 170 minutes of Christmas-related music is overkill even in the proper season, while tackling each of these EPs separately would create the illusion of being way more obsessed with Sufjan Stevens than I could possibly ever see myself becoming. However, I did listen to all of this from first to last track (not in one sitting, of course), and, once again, I confess to being more intrigued by Sufjan as a Christmas Philosopher than by Sufjan as a General Artist.

Most probably, he is not going to make himself a lot of new fans with these releases. His take on Christmas is virulently anti-traditional — Silver & Gold is even less acceptable as a Christmas utensil for your grandparents than Songs For Christmas; at the same time, all those people for whom Christmas is either nothing at all or merely a holiday, without any religious significance, will probably want to ignore an album so full of religious symbolism. In other words, Sufjan runs a heavier risk of «falling through the cracks» with this stuff than he does with his religious vibes on his usual records — clearly, he sees himself as one of those «modernizers of Christianity» whose life usually consists of endlessly getting torn apart by atheists, on one hand, and traditional conser­vative believers, on the other. This sort of dooms all of his Christmas-izing right from the start, and also finds me empathizing with the man more than I'd like to.

The project in total is very diverse. There is a lot of old-fashioned religious devotion on these discs, for sure, but also a lot of humor, a lot of irony, some carnivalesque irreverence, and, above all, a burning desire to not merely record another Christmas album, but do something challenging and, um, progressive. As the years go by, you can see that the sessions reflect Sufjan's current musical hobbies — by the time Christmas Infinity Voyage (2008) comes along, Sufjan is already deeply involved with electronic textures, turning standards like ʽDo You Hear What I Hear?ʼ into the same Animal Collective-influenced psycho-electronic rampages that would cul­minate in The Age Of Adz. And the very last track, ʽChristmas Unicornʼ, not only summarizes all of the internal contradictions and complexities of the Christmas ritual in its lyrics, but also weaves the chorus of Joy Division's ʽLove Will Tear Us Apartʼ inside its lengthy coda — because that song, too, largely consisted of internal contradictions, and because who else other than Sufjan Stevens would think of merging the figures of Santa Claus and Ian Curtis?

That said, Sufjan Stevens cannot help being Sufjan Stevens, and for all the diversity, I find it hard as usual to comment on any of the individual songs — they mostly just sound nice, regardless of whether he is freaking out with electronic samples, playing pretty baroque piano, picking the banjo, or, very rarely, trying to rock out (ʽDing-A-Lingʼ has weird Marc Ribot-like screechy dissonant guitar all over it, making me suspect that Tom Waits might be lurking around the corner, but, alas, no dice). We could analyze the original lyrics — or we could just read the 80-page long booklet — to try and gain new insights into the nature and modern reinterpretations of Christmas, but I doubt that we could find anything truly illuminating; if there is one person out there who would walk away from these three hours of music with a forever changed perspective on how to spend his/her next holidays, I'd like to see that person. As for the music, well... it is always inventive, but the inventions are not necessarily meaningful.

If you have no time to spare for this project, or if you are simply not enough of a Sufjan Stevens fan, you can put together a pretty good idea of what it looks like by simply browsing through the song titles — you have your ʽSilent Nightʼ, but also your ʽHappy Karma Christmasʼ; your ʽWe Three Kingsʼ, but also ʽNo One Can Save You From Christmases Pastʼ; your ʽAve Mariaʼ, but also your ʽParticle Physicsʼ (!). This is enough, I think, to understand that the world at large will not be celebrating Christmas according to St. Sufjan any time soon; but, you know, at least he tried. To the best of my knowledge, however, no new Christmas-related material was released by Sufjan after 2012 — either he meant for ʽChristmas Unicornʼ to serve as a tie-up-all-loose-ends coda that puts a full stop to his Christmas canon, or he just burned out. In the latter case, as a man with a mission myself, I fully empathize with my brother-in-silliness from faraway Michigan — but this still does not mean that I will be adopting that canon any time soon.

Sufjan Stevens: The Age Of Adz

SUFJAN STEVENS: THE AGE OF ADZ (2010)

1) Futile Devices; 2) Too Much; 3) Age Of Adz; 4) I Walked; 5) Now That I'm Older; 6) Get Real Get Right; 7) Bad Communication; 8) Vesuvius; 9) All For Myself; 10) I Want To Be Well; 11) Impossible Soul.

General verdict: What happens when Animal Collective are fronted by a Christian rocker..

There is something strikingly different about the very first track on Sufjan's fifth proper studio album, ʽFutile Devicesʼ, something I cannot capture quite well at first, but then it hits me: the echo. A very simple trick, but somehow it gives the song, which consists of nothing but a quietly picked rhythm guitar track (later on, you get a few piano chords thrown in for support) and a vocal part, a layer of depth that none of his previous records had. It does not turn ʽFutile Devicesʼ into a great song — in fact, the greatest thing about it is that it reminded me very much of ʽSun­riseʼ by The Who, providing a much-needed excuse to relisten to that classic ballad — but it gives this weird premonition that maybe you are not going to have to simply sit through yet another bunch of Illinois outtakes this time.

A premonition that does come true, but not in any expectable way: after the deceptive intro, The Age Of Adz launches into full-on electronic mode. Drum machines, glitches, samples, digitally treated vocal overdubs, hip-hop and trip-hop time signatures, all the works — this is the most computerish Sufjan ever got since we were offered a chance to enjoy his rabbit almost a decade back. What triggered the change is a useless question — more useful would be the question of why it did not come sooner than that, since these days the absolute majority of art-pop people eventually switch to circuit boards, and from that point of view, Sufjan's 50 States Project, not to mention the BQE orchestral diversion, was more surprising in terms of instrumentation and pro­duction. But I guess that even somebody as smooth and calm as Sufjan Stevens eventually gets bored following the same formula.

Interestingly, The Age Of Adz is also very personal. The ethnohistorian temporarily takes a break, and in his place appears a sophisticated, but fairly straightforward troubadour — this time, it is all about relations, a difficult and confusing topic for Stevens if his lyrics are ever to be taken at face value. Some of these songs are about girlfriend problems, others are about God problems, and most, as it often happens, might be about both at the same time. That his most intimate album to that point would also turn out to be his most electronic one might just be a coincidence — or, perhaps, he thought that the confused and turbulent nature of his feelings on the subject might be best translated musically into sets of fussy digital overdubs that produce a much more psyche­delic effect than anything where you actually have to play your instruments.

In any case, it does not really matter, because musically, this is still a quintessential Sufjan Stevens album: complex, creative, atmospheric, un-catchy, and modestly smooth to the point of becoming boring background muzak in about three minutes' time. The very first of those ultra­long electronic poems begins with the following verse: "If I was a different man, if I had the blood in my eyes, I could have read of your heart, I could have read of your mind" — convenient­ly leading me to suggest that, yes indeed, just a bit more blood in his eyes couldn't hurt. The pseudo-symphonic textures of ʽToo Muchʼ, rolling over like lukewarm multi-colored waves on some tourist alien beach, remind me a lot of The Animal Collective circa Merriweather Post Pavilion — except that The Animal Collective used to do this sharper, shriller, throwing them­selves into psychobattle with real abandon, something that Sufjan Stevens is incapable of offering because... well, because he is Sufjan Stevens.

I assume that the title track, based on the work of one of the weirdest sons of Louisiana, crazy artist Prophet Royal Robertson, should be perceived as the album's first truly focal point — it is loud, anthemic, it is essentially about a schizo-warped vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, but its note of triumph, vacillating between Sufjan's softly trickling "when it dies, it rots... and when it lives, it gives it all it gots..." and multi-tracked football-stadium whoah-whoah chanting, is wasted because the elements simply do not fit together. I can totally get behind something like Arcade Fire's ʽWake Upʼ, an anthem of the forces-of-light-attack-against-overhwelming-odds kind of nature; ʽAge Of Adzʼ, in comparison, is a happy sermon without any visible signs of struggle or, in fact, personality. The whole thing is about as involving as, indeed, could be a football fan chant (actually, correction: some football fan chants, particularly funny ones, can be pretty involving) — and no, it does not even have the kick-ass energy of a ʽWe Will Rock Youʼ (which is pretty much the latter's only, and insufficiently, redeeming quality).

Admittedly, Stevens is slightly overstepping his usual bounds here: on a lot of the tracks, he raises his voice, changing from the usual lulling soft whisper to a more lilting, attention-grabbing delivery — check out ʽNow That I'm Olderʼ, for instance, one of the first ever tracks in his reper­toire where he ditches the blend-in-the-walls ghostliness and takes a sharp step forward. Formally, it's a beautiful piece: proverbially gorgeous piano, proverbially gorgeous choral harmony over­dubs (for all of Sufjan's Christianity, choirs of pure-white angels do not make regular appearances on his songs, but he makes an exception here), proverbially enlightened lead vocals — and still, something is missing to make me properly tear up. Sincerity? Energy? Or is it simply a matter of not finding the right notes for the occasion? Perhaps some day we will figure this out better, but for now, I can only state with sadness that this new, improved version of Sufjan Stevens remains as much of a skilled craftsman — and little more than that — as it used to be.

Sufjan got some flak from critics for the last composition: ʽImpossible Soulʼ is merely another of those six-to-seven minute numbers that, for some reason, was stretched out to ultra-epic length (over 25 minutes) — essentially by taking the extended coda, slapping it in the middle, and then returning to the first part. It wouldn't be so bad, of course, if the choral part were awesome on its own, but it is not. Its main hook is the endlessly looped refrain of "boy we can do much more together, it's not so impossible", which is not only a fairly banal lyric for Sufjan Stevens, the Weaver of Words, but also sounds like one of those cheerleader things — intentionally, perhaps, but poorness of intention is no excuse. This is all the more sad because the quiet first part, shared by Sufjan with Shara Nova (My Brightest Diamond), has a few delightful moments (the most delightful of those, the tender falsetto "don't be distracted" bit does sound 100% out of the Beach House songbook, though). But, of course, few tracks these days deserve to be 25 minutes long, and Sufjan Stevens tracks are hardly among the few that I could possibly recommend.

As before, I see no point in commenting on too many of the individual tracks — they all bring home pretty much the same kind of bacon. I neither approve nor disapprove of Sufjan's handling of the electronic equipment, either: his methods may be different, but he gets the exact same kind of results no matter what he does, be it weaving a complex net of chimes, flutes, and banjos, or laying down gurgling electronic samples like there was no tomorrow. Production values have actually gone up, I think — the music does not possess the same «dollhouse flavor» nearly as often as it used to; but memorable or truly deep-sounding themes are still a problem. All in all, life has certainly gained a number of new layers in its transition from the age of Aquarius to the age of Adz; problem is, there is no certainty that life actually needs those new layers, just as there is no certainty that the life and creativity of Prophet Royal Robertson carried any significant meaning for the world at large. At the very least, listening to The Age Of Adz has failed to convince me of that — though I can certainly see where Sufjan Stevens could see a kindred spirit in the likes of somebody like Robertson.

Sufjan Stevens: The BQE

SUFJAN STEVENS: THE BQE (2009)

1) Prelude On The Esplanade; 2) Introductory Fanfare For The Hooper Heroes; 3) Move­ment I: In The Countenance Of Kings; 4) Movement II: Sleeping Invader; 5) Interlude I: Dream Sequence In Subi Circumnavigation; 6) Movement III: Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise; 7) Movement IV: Traffic Shock; 8) Movement V: Self-Organizing Emergent Patterns; 9) Interlude II: Subi Power Waltz; 10) Interlude III: Invisible Accidents; 11) Movement VI: Isorhythmic Night Dance With Interchanges; 12) Move­ment VII (Finale): The Emperor Of Centrifuge; 13) Postlude: Critical Mass.

General verdict: If somebody expects me to evaluate a neo-classical symphony on the pressing issue of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I'd say too much honor for me.

It is highly likely that the huge effort made for Illinois wore Sufjan out — on the whole, over the next twelve years he only came out with two «proper» LPs, and the first one of these was sepa­rated from Illinois by half a decade (not to mention that he had to openly abandon the «50-state project», realizing that the endeavor was a tad more than he could chew). Nevertheless, that entire interim is filled with all sorts of side projects, collaborations, and occasional goofs, some of which are, if not necessarily better than the high points of the man's career, then at least nearly as intriguing — like this one, for instance.

Apparently, the Brooklyn Academy of Music commissioned Sufjan to make a movie about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — along with a complete orchestral soundtrack. For somebody not living within a ten miles' radius of the BQE, this probably does not sound like a particularly hot proposal; and having watched about a couple of minutes from the completed documentary, I have to state that visually, it is hardly that more exciting than simply taking a seat on the ramp and watching cars go by for about fifty minutes — though, admittedly, there is plenty of artsy editing, some psychedelic montages, and plenty of subtle visual aggrandizing that guarantees life will never be the same again if you ever decide to take a ride on the Interstate 278.

However, Stevens is a music-maker first and a movie-maker l... never, and what matters here, if anything ever matters at all, is the orchestral suite he wrote for the occasion: a forty-minute piece rehearsed and performed live on November 1–3, 2007, then properly recorded, allegedly also in one live take, in the studio. On the whole, one should probably think of the piece as a grand symphony, written very much in the vein of traditional American classical music — think Ives or Copland — despite featuring some trademark Sufjan elements as well (heavy emphasis on chimes and woodwinds, for one thing), as well as poking its nose into more modern elements: ʽTraffic Shockʼ, for instance, is a near-completely electronic movement. Another very obvious influence, since it also refers to both the aural and visual aspects, is that of Philip Glass' Koyaanisqatsi suite: it is almost always mentioned in conjunction with BQE, but we should also remember that Glass is primarily a minimalist, while Sufjan, at least after his earliest works, has clearly moved on to a much more dynamic frame of reference.

Just how good this work is is simply not for me to state. As pleasant background accompaniment to your chores, it does its job dutifully: as a stand-alone piece of art, I guess it can hardly be judged without reference to its lofty predecessors, and something — though I could never formu­late it explicitly — something suggests to me that once the dust clouds settle, Ives, Copeland, Reich, and Glass are not exactly going to huddle together on that shelf to make free room for Sufjan Stevens. The orchestra does a good job in that this is probably the first of Sufjan's projects that does not give off that «music in a dollhouse» effect, but at least the dollhouse was his perso­nal know-how, and now that he has crossed into symphonic territory, we can, at best, confirm that the man has done his homework and paid his dues — but has he created something outstanding here? has he innovated, has he discovered some fabulous new musical themes that link the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway straight to Heaven? I have no idea.

I do believe that if you happen to love both Sufjan and the American classical music tradition, the Expressway might take you higher, after all — since the music combines the legacy of jazz-and-vaudeville-influenced classical motifs with Sufjan's own friendly-whimsical personality, at least in spots. But if you are not a big fan of either (like myself)? Tough luck. In any case, I reserve my right to make a better judgement for after I have pronounced one on ʽAppalachian Springʼ, which is probably not coming any time soon.

Sufjan Stevens: Songs For Christmas

SUFJAN STEVENS: SONGS FOR CHRISTMAS (2006)

Noel: 1) Silent Night; 2) O Come O Come Emmanuel; 3) We're Goin' To The Country!; 4) Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming; 5) It's Christmas! Let's Be Glad!; 6) Holy Holy, Etc.; 7) Amazing Grace.

Hark!: 1) Angels We Have Heard On High; 2) Put The Lights On The Tree; 3) Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing; 4) I Saw Three Ships; 5) Only At Christmas Time; 6) Once In Royal David's City; 7) Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!; 8) What Child Is This Anyway?; 9) Bring A Torch, Jeanette, Isabella.

Ding! Dong!: 1) O Come, O Come Emmanuel; 2) Come On! Let's Boogey To The Elf Dance!; 3) We Three Kings; 4) O Holy Night; 5) That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!; 6) Ding! Dong!; 7) All The King's Horns; 8) The Friendly Beasts.

Joy: 1) The Little Drummer Boy; 2) Away In A Manger; 3) Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!; 4) The First Noel; 5) Did I Make You Cry On Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!); 6) The Incarnation; 7) Joy To The World.

Peace: 1) Once In Royal David's City; 2) Get Behind Me, Santa!; 3) Jingle Bells; 4) Christmas In July; 5) Lo! How A Rose E'er Blooming; 6) Jupiter Winter; 7) Sister Winter; 8) O Come O Come Emmanuel; 9) Star Of Wonder; 10) Holy, Holy, Holy; 11) The Winter Solstice.

General verdict: Santa Sufjan is coming to town, and for those of us who still celebrate Christmas, he's A-OK.

I confess that, going against my own rule of thumb, I have only managed to listen to this behe­moth once — after all, it is a whoppin' two hours of Christmas music, and it's not even Christmas season at the moment. It might have been easier to make five separate short reviews for the five Christmas EPs that Sufjan had diligently and meticulously presented for his fans from 2001 to 2006 (for some reason, missing 2004) before merging them all together in this one mega-package; but such an approach might make Sufjan look like a professional Christmas caroler, occasionally diverting the audience with a few minor side projects (Illinois, etc.), and make me look like I'm taking the message of Roy Wood's ʽI Wish It Was Christmas Every Dayʼ way too seriously.

In any case, my lack of diligence may be redeemed by an overall positive evaluation: ironically, this was the easiest and most enjoyable collection of Sufjan Stevens tunes I have had to sit through so far. The man may be a formulaic and mono-moody songwriter alright, ambitious be­yond actual capacity and smooth beyond reasonable tolerance, but in the context of Christmas celebrations, all of this actually plays to his advantage. I mean, all this time I have been talking about pixie dances in the everglades and about teddy bears playing chimes in dollhouses — well, in a way, that is what Christmas is all about, and Sufjan fits right in here: gimmicky enough to give the old standards some new spins, but not arrogant enough to spoil the Christmas mood with too many modernist or avantgardist deconstructions.

Each of the five volumes is a mix of traditional carols and Sufjan originals, with the latter gradu­ally taking over the former so that Joy, the last volume, is almost completely comprised of new music. If you wanted to, you could easily isolate the originals and end up with a full extra CD of new music — but you shouldn't want to, since the very idea is to integrate the old with the new, and some of the arrangements that Stevens comes up with for the oldies are just as important to the experience as his own songs. As usual, many of them are based upon drones / vamps with endless repetition of the same chord, but at least now you can explain that away as imitations of sleigh bells. Santa has a long journey through snowy roads ahead of him, after all.

In between standards, Sufjan weaves in occasional humorous vignettes — ʽGet Behind Me, Santa!ʼ, in particular, is a funny dialog between Santa and a protagonist who is sick to death of the Christmas season ("I don't care about what you say Santa Claus / You're a bad brother breaking into people's garages"), presided over by a poppy horn riff that might, in fact, be more memorable than any such stuff on Illinois. There is also a bit of space for intimate sentimentalism: ʽDid I Make You Cry On Christmas Day?ʼ is a song of semi-repentance for a strained relation­ship, with a tender falsetto chorus that is more oriented at people listening in dark reclusion than people having fun over a family Christmas dinner.

Most of the tracks are reasonably short, too, which is a plus in my eyes, since I have never con­sidered Stevens to be a master of extended mesmerizing codas. The most obvious exception is ʽStar Of Wonderʼ off the last EP, of which he probably thought that its piano-based groove, when properly sprinkled with additional kaleidoscopic bursts of falling stars, made for a good hypnotic experience. It really does not — the production, as is usual with Sufjan, does not have sufficient depth, and the "I see the stars coming down there..." singalong harmonies are too wispy and ghostly; but if we are just talking straightahead Christmas ambience, why not?

I suppose it also goes without saying that, since the material covers a five year period, you will see some signs of Sufjan's musical evolution — particularly noticeable if you play Noel and Joy back-to-back: the first EP is quite minimalistic, relying more on banjos and acoustic guitars for accompaniment than anything else, whereas the last one is in full-fledged Illinois mode, with multiple overdubs of keyboards, strings, woodwinds, and whatever else is available. However, on the whole the transition is so gradual that if you choose to listen to all five EPs in a row, like I did, you might not even notice it. Sure, Sufjan's arsenal of musical technologies may have increased significantly over the years, but his butter-smooth personality has remained stable and monolithic: from the opening anthemic declarations of ʽO Come O Come Emmanuelʼ to the closing anthemic declarations of ʽHoly, Holy, Holyʼ we witness the exact same rock-steady meekness of spirit — which gets so annoying on so many of the man's Big Artistic Statements, but seems so adequate on his Christmas offerings.

Bottomline predictions: if you like Sufjan Stevens in general, you will like Songs For Christmas in parti­cular. If you consider Sufjan Stevens a Holy Man of God, you will play Songs For Christ­mas at least once every year. And if you are indifferent to Sufjan Stevens, but Christmas has some sentimental value for you, you might want to try and give this one a spin — it is quite a possibility that Sufjan's way into some people's hearts might lie through their chimneys.

Sufjan Stevens: The Avalanche

SUFJAN STEVENS: THE AVALANCHE (2006)

1) The Avalanche; 2) Dear Mr. Supercomputer; 3) Adlai Stevenson; 4) The Vivian Girls Are Visited In The Night By Saint Dargarius And His Squadron Of Benevolent Butter­flies; 5) Chicago (acoustic version); 6) The Henney Buggy Band; 7) Saul Bellow; 8) Carlyle Lake; 9) Springfield, Or Bobby Got A Shadfly Caught In His Hair; 10) The Mistress Witch From McClure (Or, The Mind That Knows Itself); 11) Kaskaskia River; 12) Chicago (adult contemporary easy listening version); 13) Inaugural Pop Music For Jane Margaret Byrne; 14) No Man's Land; 15) The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake; 16) The Pick-Up; 17) The Perpetual Self, Or 'What Would Saul Alinsky Do?'; 18) For Clyde Tombaugh; 19) Chicago (multiple personality disorder version); 20) Pittsfield; 21) The Undivided Self (For Eppie And Popo).

General verdict: Second Illinoise, same as the first.

The subtitle Outtakes And Extras From The Illinois Album! is generally correct, except for one important detail: many, if not most, of the songs on this follow-up were actually written with the idea of a double album in mind — in fact, a triple one, if we remember that Sufjan typically makes 70-minute long CDs, roughly equaling three sides of traditional vinyl. The idea was even­tually scrapped, although I do not understand why: Sufjan's fans were already quite well used to the man's sprawl, and I cannot imagine any of Sufjan's reviewers actually listening to all of his records attentively all the way through anyway.

In any case, The Avalanche is simply the second half of Illinois — a little less liked by Sufjan himself, for obvious reasons of selection, and also containing some genuine moments of overkill (such as the three additional versions of ʽChicagoʼ), but on the whole, it goes without saying that if you loved the style, ideas, and feels of Illinois, you are dutifully obligated to give a little love to its younger brother as well. Unfortunately, it also makes the predicament: there are no new general words I can say about Avalanche that have not already been said about Illinois — and very few specific comments I could make about any of the individual tracks, since they, too, tend to cuddle together into one big sentimental glop, setting exactly the same mood of a never-ending Carnival of the Melancholic Woodland Pixies.

As a single example, I will take the title track — after all, it wasn't selected as the title track for nothing, so it must be somewhat symbolic of the entire experience. If you listen hard enough, you might note that the distinctive three-note chord sequence of the song, appearing around the 1 minute mark, is actually an exciting musical idea, slightly disrupting the supersmooth flow of the song and giving it a sharper edge. But it never gets properly explored — and the song, suppo­sedly describing a one man's hopeful journey to Illinois and culminating in a series of anthemic come-ons ("come on, Stone! come on, Star! come on, Snow! come on, Car!") is ultimately bogged down in monotonous and expressionless stomp. Yes, I fully admit that there might be people who like being urged on by a voice seemingly belonging to a human being who had been thoroughly and meticulously decalorized for months and months. Myself, I am still amazed at how it is even possible to write so many quasi-anthemic songs whose power cannot be measured even in a single joule.

In a general setting like this, it only gets worse when the songwriter throws in symbolic quota­tions from his betters — such as the "1-2-3-4-5-6-7 all computers go to heaven" line in ʽDear Mr. Supercomputerʼ, obviously referring to you-know-what; the song itself, however, reminds me more of the plaintive streak of The Kinks (Sufjan's "Oh-my-God-I-can't-believe-it..." shares similarities with ʽMr. Pleasantʼ), except that, once again, there is absolutely nothing to get riled up about here. Not a whiff of anger, not the slightest touch of offensiveness, not the smallest bit of evidence that this singer is a human being of flesh and blood and not a disembodied spirit or a Platonic idea. Come to think of it, is it really a sign of total humility when you sing like that, or a subtle demonstration of unprecedented arrogance?..

Maybe it would not be oh so painful like that if not for the additional insult of the long-winded song titles that float out so gratuitously, senselessly, and pretentiously. ʽInaugural Pop Music For Jane Margaret Byrneʼ, for instance. Clearly, the first female mayor of Chicago might very well deserve some pop music in her honor, but what do these minute and a half of elevator-ish key­board tones, closely resembling the kind of muzak that plays when you are accidentally redirected to some sleazy phishing website, has to do with true «pop», let alone «inaugural»? Gimmicks like that, strewn all over Sufjan's catalog but particularly viciously festering in his Illinois stage, only further my conviction that the man's art exists primarily in order to give critics something to write about, rather than give ordinary people something to enjoy from the bottom of their hearts.

Subsequently, even when Sufjan pokes a bit of fun at himself and subtitles two of his alternate arrangements for ʽChicagoʼ as «adult contemporary easy listening version» and «multiple perso­nality disorder version», respectively, I am inclined to take this at far stronger face value than we are supposed to. Because that first version, want it or not, is adult contemporary easy listening (as is a very large chunk of Sufjan's standard catalog, to tell the truth), and that second version, peppered with vocal overdubs a-plenty, does suggest that, while Stevens is probably (and hope­fully) not truly suffering from multiple personality disorder, he is somewhat obsessed with the concept. The only problem is that he is not very interesting as a vocalist all by himself, and it is not clear whether this issue can be solved by recording multiple vocal parts and having them bounce off each other. Like, when you multiply boring by boring, does boring squared equal exciting and involving? Not for me it doesn't.

As an optimistic and excusatory conclusion, I do have to add that I totally admire and respect the man's working ethic. To do so much research on the history and culture of Illinois, to spend so much time writing so many songs, to play most of the instruments in the studio himself — in terms of dedication to an idea, Sufjan should be a source of inspiration to us all. And it is not his fault, after all, that he does not possess the slightest spark of songwriting genius — in fact, I would be somewhat surprised if he did, because meticulous and hyper-productive work like this rarely, if ever, goes hand-in-hand with true genius. Herein lies the importance of Avalanche: far more significant is the mere fact that it exists, rather than the emotional and artistic value of its actual songs. Like, some people probably learned who Adlai Stevenson, Saul Bellow, and Saul Alinsky were from listening to it (let alone Jane Byrne) — surely there is something to be said about pure educational value, too.

Sufjan Stevens: Illinois

SUFJAN STEVENS: COME ON FEEL THE ILLINOISE (2005)

1) Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois; 2) The Black Hawk War; 3)  Come On! Feel The Illinoise!; 4) John Wayne Gacy, Jr.; 5) Jacksonville; 6) A Short Re­prise For Mary Todd; 7) Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother!; 8) One Last ʽWhoo-Hoo!ʼ For The Pullman!!; 9) Go! Chicago! Go! Yeah!; 10) Casimir Pulaski Day; 11) To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament; 12) The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts; 13) Prairie Fire That Wanders About; 14) A Conjunction Of Drones...; 15) The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!; 16) They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!; 17) Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All The Way Out In Bushnell; 18) In This Temple As In The Hearts Of Man For Whom He Saved The Earth; 19) The Seer's Tower; 20) The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders; 21) Riffs And Variations On A Single Note For Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, And The King Of Swing, To Name A Few; 22) Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, And I Shake The Dirt From My Sandals As I Run.

General verdict: This "Illinois" is a really nice place where nothing, nothing ever happens.

Critical consensus usually regards Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel The Illinoise And Spend Twenty Three Years Of Your Life Trying To Memorize All The Fascinating Song Titles Jesus Helped Me To Come Up With Because As Of 2005 You Have Nothing Better Left To Do Anyway as the finest hour (more precisely, the finest hour and fifteen minutes) of the man's career, and for once, I will not presume to disagree. If we judge Sufjan by Sufjan's own schtick and nobody else's, you have to admit that this is the man's magnum opus that he will have a pretty hard time to match, let alone surpass. Which still does not make it a particularly great album: in order to make even one great album, Sufjan Stevens would have to stop being Sufjan Stevens — and become, oh, I dunno, Randy Newman, for instance.

First things first, though: like Michigan before it, this album pretends to be very tightly con­nected to the history, culture, and ambience of Chicago and other Illinois landmarks — but the connections rarely, if ever, extend beyond lyrical references (most of which will be too obscure for non-US residents anyway, and a few might not even be completely obvious to residents of Chicago itself: Sufjan did quite a bit of factual research on the history of the state while working on the songs). Musically, however, this is Sufjan territory all along, and the overall impression left by the album is as far removed from classic «Americana» as possible. I mean, musically most people would probably associate Chicago with the blues and Chess Records, but one thing Sufjan never, ever does is play the blues. The closest Stevens really gets to honoring the musical heroes of the city is with ʽRiffs And Variations On A Single Note...ʼ — fifty seconds of brass and wood­wind improvisation more or less as announced, and I am not sure whether the real Jelly Roll or Louis Armstrong would have been pleased with this.

Not that there's anything wrong with such an approach, just like you should not probably blame a priori a reggae opera about the unification of China, or a doom metal album about the creation of Tetris. All the Illinois-related themes merely create a conceptual framework to make the record seem like a variegated and comprehensive portrait of a fictional universe, loosely based on real world events and environments. The portrait itself, however, looks more like a lengthy carnival, a giddy musical ritual performed in honor of the local gods so that the flowers could grow and the water could flow. The fact that the giddiness and playfulness are occasionally interrupted by moments of sadness and even of alarm means nothing, because the steady, unnerving grip of soft, friendly tenderness and guidance is present on every single track: it is a well-known fact that Sufjan Stevens never loses his temper, even when you set his balls on fire.

Stevens is credited for about twenty different instruments on the album, many of them forming complex overdubbed patterns (often with non-standard time signatures), so this is all as sympho­nic as it ever gets in the man's history. And while many of the tracks still retain the form of a one-phrase groove, running around and around in circles as additional overdubs may or may not settle upon its body, others see the man take on extra challenges. The title track, for instance, bravely goes from 5/4 to 4/4, and so does ʽThe Tallest Manʼ, I think (granted, the different sections there are dutifully marked as separate parts: on the whole, Sufjan remains a firm believer in the power of the monotonous mesmerizing groove).

Alas, in the end all this complexity and all this symbolism lead to pretty much the same dead end. All of the tracks set the same mood: I cannot genuinely name any stand-outs, big or small, because no matter how many times I spin the record, everything gels together in a puddle of soft, rosy musical goo. Whether he is singing about serial killers, Casimir Pulaski, the Sears Tower, or the Lord our Saviour, whether he is backing himself with just an acoustic guitar and a banjo or with an entire orchestra of strings, keyboards, and choral vocals, that befuddling «dollhouse feel» never, ever goes away. Sometimes it gets close to infuriating — the man sings about serious matters, and all he manages to come up with are these feather-light woodland fairy dances, with Stevens himself at the helm as a modern day St. Francis or something, so I feel like deep down inside, you'd probably have to be a Franciscan monk to really get this music.

I would say that the only time Illinoise manages, perhaps accidentally, to delve into emotionally less bubblegummy territory is on ʽThey Are Night Zombies!!ʼ, whose bass groove and relentless­ly «marching-on» backing vocals create a whiff of disturbance and ominousness in between Sufjan's usual quasi-Franciscan prayers for the departed — if there is one track that at least lightly interrupts the even flow of the album, it is that one. Even so, this «interrupt» is largely just a matter of cosmetic subtlety.

But what is wrong with a consistent atmosphere if it is produced so effectively?, you will ask. Well, nothing, really, except that I cannot regard this atmosphere as «satisfactory» from any possible point of view. Really great art is always offensive — that is, it goes on the offense, prod­ding you, challenging you, provoking you, shaking you up, making your fists clench or your spirit soar. Illinoise might come a bit closer to that state than any other Sufjan Stevens album in existence, but there is no tension in this music — just hollow, useless bliss. This is probably the kind of muzak that St. Peter now has installed in his personal elevator, although I'm pretty sure that even St. Peter could have his blood boiling in a pinch — I seriously doubt it that Sufjan Stevens would have been able to mobilize himself to cut off the high priest's servant's right ear in times of need.

One last excuse might be made, in that Stevens is also a big fan of Steve Reich, and if the mini­malist approach works well enough for Reich, why shouldn't it work for Sufjan? (See the final track, ʽOut Of Egypt...ʼ, which is pretty much just a direct four-minute tribute to Reich's loops). But the catch here is that Sufjan Stevens writes chamber pop, not minimalism; and chamber pop, like any other kind of pop (and like any other kind of chamber music, for that matter), requires dynamics to capture the listener's attention and spirit. Minimalist experiments are different — they may range from purely intellectual challenges to trance-inducing patterns; it is not the kind of music to which you should be expected to shed tears or feel sharp pangs. And besides, as ʽOut Of Egyptʼ clearly shows, Sufjan Stevens is not exactly pushing forward the boundaries of mini­malism, either — more like just homaging one more of his idols.

At the very least, Illinoise is a very welcome rebound from the total and utter slumber of Seven Swans — the quasi-orchestral arrangements help out quite a bit. But as one of the principal torch bearers for Art-Pop in the 21st century, Illinoise seems to me very much a false idol, unless, of course, we have reached an implicit agreement that Art-Pop has been completely reduced to Pythagorean musical geometry, because Dionysus happens to be doing time for a long history of offensive behavior and unsolicited sexual harrassment. From that point of view, why, sure, Sufjan Stevens may definitely be the symbol of our times.

Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans

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.