Vinyl Diaries XVII: Sufjan Stevens

Photo by joe lencioni

Sufjan Stevens
The State Theatre
13 January, 2008

If angels have iPods, they doubtless have them chock full of JS Bach. But those in the know, those who’ve swung a little low, tasted the forbidden fruit of earthly delights – they’ve got a little Sufjan in there too, ready to get them through a long road trip, or for kicking back with a Sunday afternoon Moscow Mule.

Sufjan, the little Michigan boy scout who could, has a grand total of two songs. Fortuitously, they’re both utterly irresistible, able to be rolled out in all sorts of guises and variations, unresolvable twists and turns that lead places we’ve never quite been. He brought them both to town for his Sydney Festival shows, along with a ten-piece music making ensemble to realise his vision writ large.

My softest spot has always been for Sufjan the Fragile, the bruised, overwhelmed little choir boy lost we find cut adrift through Seven Swans. But the sweeping, brass-blast majesty of Come Feel the Illinois finally clicked into place hearing it in the flesh, witnessing the way in which the boisterous parts were wrapped around what still remains a brittle core, a delicate and bleeding heart.

The childish super hero outfits and the rambling tales of heightened nonsense proved a perfect fit, not so much for the music but for what I imagine must be its genesis. One gets the distinct impression that Sufjan is bewitched by life’s boundless possibilities, amazed on a daily basis by things many would walk past without even seeing. This eternally wistful, open-eyed wonderment is precariously child-like, but what emerges manages to side-step tweeness and a misguided elevation of naivety. It’s innocence without the jettisoning of reflection, joy without a cloying sentimentality – parable at all times before preaching.

Constructed with a deft sense of balance, tonight’s set charted a course that made the most of the band and Sufjan’s orchestrative flair, yet allowed the space and silences required for his special brand of scratched intimacy. During the passages with only a piano for adornment, his voice is revealed as a thing of cracked beauty. My threshold for singer-songwriters indulging via piano is remarkably low, but as with Catpower I can make a special exception for Sufjan. Whether the haunting 'Casimir Pulaski Day' and intricately textured 'The Seer's Tower', or giddily driven 'Come On! Feel The Illinoise' and 'Chicago', he held us in the cupped palm of his hand, shaking and blowing on us gently. The highlights were when he was able to weave these different shades through a single piece, as in the flawlessly gorgeous 'The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!' and a dark reworking of 'Seven Swans' that crashed and soared in equal measure.

I’ve long been intrigued by the imagery and iconography of Sufjan’s pieces. His Christianity is always there on the sleeve to be seen, but it’s not exactly a technicolour dreamcoat. It seems more as though it’s just one of the pieces of a patchwork quilt, popping up every few squares but blending in with a bigger picture; a Midwest Belle & Sebastian, where Sunday school is as good a place as any to try and score a snog.

Working through most of Come Feel the Illinois – the sprawling opus against which one feels the majority of his career will be judged – there were moments both gaudy and rapturous, essential and tangential. The brass filled many of the pieces out and gave them a sense of spectacle and bombast, trumpets heralading the opening of new doors of possibility to us all.

Whatever musical detours were taken, it all kept coming back to that voice. A husky wisp or a bell-clear chirrup, a stifled sigh or a rose petal rubbed between thumb and forefinger – it’s a gracefully contradictory gift that’s the secret to the whole affair, keeping it simultaneously grounded in earthly experience and blissfully soaring heaven-bound, with the rest of us in tow.

I’ll try and send a postcard.