sufjan's homemade orchestra

i've been watching clips of sufjan performances on you tube - the watching part of my listening project, i guess. sujan's performances are really interesting. and you know, it's what an artist does live that determines if the band is good, or great. i love bands that really get artistic with performances.

the first two bands that come to mind are the flaming lips and spiritualized. the flaming lips have tons of people onstage, in costumes, dancing. there are lights, video screens, confetti, balloons, disco balls, you name it. live, spiritualized can rock out, or be meditative and dreamy. the ultimate spiritualized recording - which shows off what they can do in concert - is the royal albert hall live album. with a choir and horn section joining the band, the gospel according to jason spaceman is especially kick-ass.

and sufjan, with his homemade orchestra onstage in costumes. part of the sufjan mythology is that he is largely self-taught, and likes to encourage people to play instruments they've never tried before. live, his mini orchestra totally pulls off the task of reproducing the sufjan sound, which seems like an amazing feat. on you tube, you can watch enough suf video clips to see how the sound has evolved as the musicians get tighter as a group.

the listening project that must not end; or, how i tried to put down my ipod but sufjan stevens stopped me

after listening to sufjan's entire discography multiple times, i have to say that it will be hard to move on to the next listening project. there is something really incredible about putting on one of sufjan's albums and heading into that universe for a while. i'm going to have to suf out often, even after i pick a new listening project.

whatever you think of sufjan - and there are plenty of critics and controversies - you have to respect his talent. he is a multi-instrumentalist who plays more than twenty instruments on his albums. one critic's use of the word "overachiever" to describe sufjan is not far wrong - as the more than forty songs about illinois on illinoise and the avalanche attest to - but it's the attitude in that statement that bugs me. suf has big ideas - like the fifty states project - but i think that rocks. why not dream up a massive project?

the suf listening has gotten me thinking about religion. i think i might do the spiritualized discography next.

a dreaming lesson

right now, we are watching the episode of spongebob where he hops into his friends' dreams. what a funny introduction to the idea of a dream for my not-quite-two-year-old son. patrick's minimalist dream of being on the horsey ride is especially surreal.

here comes the sun

now i'm checking out a sun came, sufjan's 2003 record. with its lyrical opening track, we are what you say, opens with sounds that bring to mind a group of minstrels playing in a mead hall. it develops into a an enormously wide collection of sounds, styles, and ideas. it's challenging compared to sufjan's later material.

the tracks demetrius and dumb i sound, mark a moment of departure into more the unusual territory on the record. this track also has touches of the medieval-sounding flutes and instrumentation that opened the record, but goes on to travel through rock, minstrel, and middle eastern sounds.

the experimentation on the album doesn't always work. sufjan could have left the track rice pudding off of the album entirely. it just doesn't come together musically, and the vocal isn't what sufjan does best as a singer. super sexy woman doesn't work very well for sufjan either. i do love one thing about it - it sounds like his tribute to the flaming lips.

ultimately, i like a sun came. i miss the beautiful orchestration of the later material, though. and i miss the banjo - one of the elements of the sufjan sound that i like most. when we finally get a touch of banjo on a sun came, it's deep into the album, on happy birthday, a pretty song that, along with a few others on the record, provides a glimpse of where sufjan is headed.

the magic W.A.N.D.

random thought. how cool is the W.A.N.D. by the flaming lips? the lyrics about magic are awesome: you've got the power in there/waving your wand in the air. it's like a ringer singing about wizards. the song has a surprisingly prog-rock-practically-rush-or-steve-miller vibe. somehow it works, and it's amazing. how do the lips pull that off? i hate rush.

like an avalanche

my sufjan listening project has continued today, with more exploration, of the avalanche in particular. the avalanche is made up of material that didn't make it onto the previous album, illinoise, including a gorgeous acoustic alternate version of the song chicago. the album is similar to illinoise in tone, but has more stripped-down songs.

what i like best about the avalanche is its title. the image of an avalanche seems to fit my experience of discovering sufjan, and both the abundance of sufjan material and density (emotional and lyrical) of his music. the instrumentation on any given song, on this album or any of the others, could take many hearings to fully explore. and the instrumentation itself, which sounds unusual on first listen, becomes full of markers of the sufjan sound. sufjan's breathy voice, the complex song structures and instrumentation, and the lyrical narratives create a dreamlike world.

another sufjan marker is the tendency toward interesting performances. i haven't seen him live, but what i've seen in clips (like the excellent austin city limits performance in 2006, and other great shorts available on you tube) shows him and the band in a variety of costumes, all of which tie into the material on the albums. it kills me that i missed the town hall shows in new york city a few months back. there are some amazing clips up on you tube right now. the sound is excellent and everything else is spectacle. it's a handmade spectacle as well, artsy rather than flashy. like the flaming lips, who always win in the live performance category for me.

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.

tropicalia

tropicalia's on my mind today. MOJO published a really cool article on tropicalia a while back. i made a list of artists to check out - but so far i've only listened to one band. okay, so i'll make it a belated new year's resolution.

but the band i listened to, os mutantes, is amazing. their music is surreal stuff, and often disorienting in its tendency to suddenly change genres mid-song. i kind of like it though. it's like "hair" sometimes, or "shaft."

since i've only heard one band, i need to keep listening before i can think about troplicalia in general. (though according to MOJO, the band is the foundational tropicalia band.) there is some info up on luaka bop about os mutantes, but not much. cool that it's up on david byrne's website along with other brazilian artists.

covers by the flaming lips

songs covered by the flaming lips are definitely an acquired taste. the first lips covers i remember hearing are beck and radiohead. wayne's falsetto is pretty hard to get used to on these tracks, especially since the original songs have very smooth vocal perfomances from beck and thom yorke. both beck and yorke are virtuosic singers, in their own way. beck has a breathy richness to his voice and an impeccable sense of rhythm and timing. yorke, for all his tortured posturing, actually has a voice that is very well-controlled, and he never misses a note or seems to strain. both beck and yorke make singing and performing seem effortless.

but when wayne sings, there are times when you hear his voice reach for impossible notes. it's quite beautiful, actually. but matched up with the beck and radiohead songs, it's very hard to get into. other covers are much more suited to wayne's voice, but still bug me in other ways. like the lips version of queen's bohemian rhapsody, a song i have never liked. after several listens, i still wasn't feeling it. but recently, i found myself craving the song, so i put it on. i listened to it twice. and you know, something about it really kicks ass. it's hard to accept that the lips can cover a song that i hate, and make me like it.

i think they chose the song because it's three sections really echo a lot of the lips' music. the dramatic, slow tempo at the beginning, with soft instrumentation and a lot of emotion. the utterly silly middle section, which shows off how the lips are willing to simply act up. and the last, best section, where they just rock out. always a lips favorite - the epic rock song.

a good playlist of lips covers might be good project. it takes some listening - at least for me - to really get into the lips covers. but it's absolutely worthwhile.