the sufjan stevens listening project

before i get to the sufjan post, a meta post about the blog in general. it's not my best writing, for sure. but i'd never post if i had to spend a lot of time on my writing, to be honest. for now anyway, my blog is more a sketchpad than anything else.

enough about me. sufjan stevens is a young singer/songwriter whose work became an immediate favorite for me last year. like a lot of other people, i first heard sufjan's music with the release of his album illinoise.

since that first listen, i have embarked on a sufjan listening project, to check out his entire discography. the first thing i realized was that sufjan is an artist whose music draws you in quickly, so that you find yourself listening to him all the time. that was my experience. illinoise and greetings from michigan, the previous album, are two of the best albums i've ever heard. sufjan has other great albums as well, especially the seven swans, but the two states are the real masterpieces of sufjan's work.

sufjan writes gorgeous, epic, moving songs. but if he were any less talented, there would be a real risk of the material being self-indulgent garbage. here's an example. imagine a musician devoting years to projects like writing an album for each of the fifty states, each sign in the chinese zodiac, and each planet in the solar system. that could be lame, right? i'm thinking of concept albums and artists who were really, really into themes... on the crappy end, you've got jethro tull. on the brilliant end, david bowie. this is the fine line that sufjan walks. but so far, the music sufjan makes is nothing less than incredible.

one song to listen to in particular from illinoise is jacksonville. the banjo, the rhythm, the gorgeous harmonies. the slight marching-band, just-behind-the-beat quality. the horns and strings. a truly well-written song. the zodiac album, enjoy your rabbit, which is largely instrumental, with few vocals, is more chaotic and discordant than the sounds you'll hear on the states albums. the earlier material is very good and worth listening to, but the later albums are a better introduction to the sufjan universe.

something else that strikes me about sufjan is that he is a writer, who studied at the new school, and he has several published pieces. his song titles careen into the poetic as well, which i do actually like - but they're terribly long and therefore scroll very slowly across the screen of my ipod. his writing - whether in song lyrics, song titles, or short stories - is interesting and reflects his very eclectic upbringing and personality.

the sufjan listening will continue with the avalanche.