A Complete History of Sufjan Stevens
EDITOR'S NOTE: I've picked up some momentum in my "Every Album I Own" review series, closing in on the letter "T," and thus, close to the end of what will have been a ten-year series comprised of over 1000 individually written pieces. However, I just realized that to finish the letter "S," I'll have to review all of my Sufjan Stevens albums--multiple complex works, some of which I find very personal. Suddenly, I felt the logjam that has at times slowed this series come rolling down the river again...but, I'm going to take an approach that's helped in that case before--I'm going to review every Sufjan Stevens solo album in one piece, just like I did with both Pearl Jam and Norma Jean. Thus, I can more naturally discuss my personal history with the artist's work throughout instead of doing so in a bunch of overly long reviews that repeat themselves. And one, and two, and
A Sun Came: 4/10
Enjoy Your Rabbit: 6/10
Michigan: 8/10
Seven Swans: 8/10
Illinois: 10/10
The Avalanche: 8/10
All Delighted People: 7/10
The Age of Adz: 6/10
Carrie and Lowell: 9/10
A Sun Came
1999 Asthmatic Kitty
Sufjan's 1999 debut has the reputation of being somewhat of a DIY folk-rock album. While that's true, there are immediate surprises, like the diverse, full instrumentation, and a Middle Eastern influence. That's not to say there isn't plenty of lo-fi white noise hanging around A Sun Came's corners. Also, Sufjan's songwriting skills at this point are still certainly...budding. There are a few small sparks of the greatness to come, but Sufjan is still finding his voice on A Sun Came, and he hasn't yet learned to self-edit. A Sun Came is 72-minutes long, and would likely work better at half that length... or less. Long portions of the album feel underdone and lack focus, and even the frequent experimentation isn't enough to hold the listener's attention for great lengths of its maddeningly extensive duration. As far as debuts come, A Sun Came certainly isn't auspicious.
Enjoy Your Rabbit
2001 Asthmatic Kitty
In all honesty, when A Sun Came was released, Sufjan's music was nowhere near my radar. However, in late 2001, when Stevens released his second album, Enjoy Your Rabbit, his name started to come up on some of the indie Christian music message boards and review sites I frequented (Opuszine and Phantom Tollbooth are still going!). Enjoy Your Rabbit received attention in those circles because Sufjan switched gears completely from his previous work, creating a concept album around the Chinese Zodiac, while going in a completely electronic, instrumental direction, and...he does this style well! The album does go on for far too long yet again (80 MINUTES!), but the songwriting is more fully formed, and many individual songs, particularly the powerful "Year of the Rat," with its wordless vocal climax, stand strong on their own. The most incredible aspect, and I say this having not listened to Year of the Rabbit until hearing Michigan and Illinois many times, is that many elements of Sufjan's future music are put in place here. The 1-2-3, 1-2-3 triad element he'd soon employ to great effect with woodwinds is on full display, and the melodies he sings (wordlessly) and the way he layers his vocals are also harbingers of what's to come. In fact, one of the instrumental melodies from "Year of the Horse" is even used later in Michigan's "They Also Mourn..." Overall, Enjoy Your Rabbit's got some great songs, even if Sufjan is still perfecting his craft, and the album again goes on for far too long. If anything, the organ notes of"Year of Our Lord," which closes the album in a beautiful wash of noise as it announces the coming of the Creator of the animals the previous tracks were named for, seem to prophesy the musical greatness from Stevens that is soon to come.
Michigan
2003 Asthmatic Kitty/Sounds Familyre
And thus arrives my first actual exposure to Sufjan Stevens' music. I was driving in my car to class one morning in the fall of 2003, the first semester of my more-than-two-semester senior year, listening to the radio station where I DJ'd, when I heard the intro to Michigan's "All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!" I was immediately struck by how the piano, drum, guitar, and vibraphone(?) sounded like a modern take on Vince Guaraldi's excellent, timeless music for Peanuts. Then, those whispery, wispy, wavery vocals came in, and I was immediately turned off. I just didn't like them. Still, the song was so well-structured, even in the vocal melodies, which incorporated some great female backgrounds, that I called up the station, and asked who I was listening to. "Sufjan Stevens," said one of the daytime DJ's. "Ah, so that's what he sounds like," I said. Thankfully, after later enjoying Illinois, I was able to overcome my distaste for Stevens' vocals, which actually felt like a comforting warm breeze on a cool day once I became better acquainted--in fact, there are moments, and Michigan has a few, where Stevens sings like an angel.
In other words, I was wrong.
As for the album, Stevens makes an incredible jump in songwriting skill here from his earlier work. Michigan presents a clear and consistent aural palette, as Stevens is able to create a sort of hybrid folk/light jazz epic. He heavily utilizes the banjo, an instrument that had perhaps been the victim of musical elitism, often viewed as a poor-man's plucking guitar for drunken revelry. Under Stevens' guidance, the banjo becomes something sacred, angelic and emotive,. At the same time, it conjures the left-behind folks Michigan supports, champions, and mourns with on such tracks as "The Upper Peninsula," and particularly the insanely powerful "For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti." I don't know if kids still make romantic whatever-the-current-technology's equivalent of mix-tapes, but I can assure them from experience, put "For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" on whatever you're creating. It's such a beautiful, emotional song, full of religious power and empathy, you absolutely cannot go wrong. As Michigan's third track, it announces Sufjan's arrival as a premiere artist, and remains one of his greatest works.
As for Michigan as an album, for awhile I viewed it as sort of an excellent trial run for the better Illinois, but I've come to find that point of view reductive. In truth, Michigan holds a great and unique power all its own, a tribute to the state in which Stevens was born and spent many formative years. While it name-drops many Michigan-based locations and events, Michigan feels more of an ode and anthem of support for the people of its titled state than does Illinois, the latter album feeling at once both more historical and universal. This makes sense--in a way, Michigan feels more personal for Stevens (hard to get more personal than Sufjan's confessional tale of parental abandonment in "Romulus"), though it does have a few flaws that the artist was able to pinpoint and move beyond.
Namely, the 15-track, 65-minute Michigan gets a bit bogged down in places, particularly its final third, which is full of longer, more droning, drowsy tracks that have a samey-feel, and don't quite carry the momentum of the album's first ten tracks. It's not that those late tracks aren't strong, but stacked against one another, and coming at the end of an already long album, they overstay their welcome. Thankfully, though, Michigan ends on a high note, with the powerful "Vito's Ordination Song," which feels like the payoff to the earlier "For the Widows..." with its horns (another Michigan stalwart) and martial drums giving a cathartic air of finality.
Overall, with its full instrumentation, including some all-star xylophone and organ appearances, along with a certain chiming nostalgic sound (bells and glockenspiel?) I associate with the 70's and the earlier parts of my childhood, all of which I've failed to mention up to this point, its brilliant arrangements, and its improved songwriting, Michigan is a noteworthy and worthwhile work in Stevens' storied catalogue. I'll try to write an even longer sentence later.
Seven Swans
2004 Sounds Familyre
After the monumental shift of the densely-packed, instrument avalanche of Michigan, Sufjan Stevens returns just nine months later with Seven Swans, a fairly quiet album of banjo-centric songs focused on religion. It's almost like, after orchestrating (and playing) so many parts, Stevens wants to meditate and center himself, before diving into the even more complex and monumental Illinois.
Indeed, Seven Swans is likely the most meditative collection of songs Stevens has released to date, with minimal compositions that reference scripture and retell Bible stories, like Abraham and Issac ("Abraham/put off on your son/take instead the ram/until Jesus comes") on "Abraham," and Christ's transfiguration on..."The Transfiguration." Seven Swans is straightforward in both lyrical and musical content, with few accoutrements to either, and yet Stevens' focus, conviction, and increasing melodic skill make for a calming and near revelatory listen. These songs, haunted and holy, are great for driving through a mountain wood, sitting near a fire in a quiet room, taking a bath in the dark.
Sufjan proves, directly in the middle of his two most adorned and orchestrated albums, that beneath all the layers of woodwinds, bells, and whistles, is strong songwriting bedrock. Seven Swans features only Stevens, Sufjan's good friend and Danielson frontman, Daniel Smith (who also handles production duties), and several Danielson members at select supporting moments...and yet in the next year, with the release of Illinois, Stevens loses none of this intimacy.
Illinois
2005 Asthmatic Kitty
This is it. The big one. Illinois, which was, like Michigan, produced by Stevens himself, received such staggering accolades in late 2005, I avoided it. I didn't want to get caught up in some communal onrush of emotion. Besides, at that point, I still wasn't sure I enjoyed Stevens' singing. I even mentioned in the comments of my Favorite Albums of 2005 list that year, in response to suggestions that I give Illinois a chance:
"Sufjan Stevens is pretty much the musical world darling right now, and I don't have anything against him...except I really don't like his voice very much, and I hate everyone."
I even doubled-down in a follow-up post.
I was wrong. Well, I still hate everyone, but in regard to Sufjan Stevens and Illinois, I was wrong. 2005, in hindsight, contains a glorious mountain of great music, at least the music I enjoy, but right now, I'd easily put Illinois on the top.
Sufjan, under the false pretense of a "50 States Project," where he would produce an album for each respective one, uses Illinois' history and geography as a sort of canvas, to paint intimate portraits of such diverse people as serial killer John Wayne Gacy, an unnamed person gaping at their powerlessness in the face of their friend's cancer, and Sufjan Stevens. Stevens incorporates many seemingly diverging aspects, including his Christianity (on an album with a song about John Wayne Gacy!), yet makes each inherent in Illinois' unique lyrical and musical fabric. He utilizes a large choral section and an army of instruments, including, but not limited to...well, here are just the ones he is credited as playing on the album:
acoustic guitar, piano, Wurlitzer, bass guitar, drums, electric guitar (which Sufjan plays here, on Michigan, and on Seven Swans in a Neil Young-esque dirty solo style, as if the guitar is electrocuting him as he's picking about), oboe, alto saxophone, flute, banjo, glockenspiel, accordion, vibraphone, recorders (alto, sopranino, soprano, & tenor), Casiotone MT-70, sleigh bells, shakers, tambourine, triangle, electronic organ, vocals
There are 16 other individuals credited with playing or singing (or both!) on Illinois. The album is a staggering achievement, with the complex orchestrations over Illinois' 74-minutes and 22 tracks still perhaps the most impressive from any album released in the 20th century...20 years into the century. The miracle of Illinois is that Stevens can go from these huge, complicated instrumental moments, to quiet, hushed banjo and vocal only portions, and always make it sound completely organic. It's magic. Illinois is magic. I have no other explanation.
I have to believe that the weight of crafting such a work of genius--either by a moment of all his skills simultaneously peaking, luck, happenstance, divine appointment, or all of the above--is what prevented Stevens from releasing another full-length album of original material for five full years after Illinois was released(excluding the 2009 BQE soundtrack, which by Stevens own admission, contains no actual songs).
And Illinois is an ALBUM, with a clear emotional through line--a morning, day, night, and dawn. It's evocative of the state itself (I've been to Chicago, and I've been to the middle of God's nowhere in Illinois, and this definitely conjures both), and it's evocative of...
When I finally picked this up in early 2006, I had just loosed myself from a nearly lifelong limiting situation, suddenly free, trying to figure it all out, and working at a distant, rural library at night, driving home on moonlit roads, listening to some mystically great albums, Illinois chief among them. But I remember those promise-filled blue skies, too, and green rolling hills. Illinois is the best album for a fresh start. The last track is titled, "Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run." I've pushed back hard against being labeled a millennial over the past decade because I was told throughout junior high, high school, and college that I was a member of Generation X. Now, according to new U.S. census delineations, I am governmentally classified as some sort of early, primordial millennial. While I will likely push back against that label to the grave (no offense millennials, I love you and think you might be my favorite generation, and I might be one of you, so good thing), when I listen to Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, I feel a bit like...a millennial. It's tough to find a millennial into this sort of music who doesn't hold up Illinois as some sort of landmark. I think of picking up my five-years-younger cousin to take her to look for a working Game Boy, and her friend coming along, and me playing Illinois on my car stereo as the soundtrack for that trip, and a few weeks later, her same friend started dating my brother (it didn't last, but it lasted a year), and if I take all three of them today and ask, "Would you consider Illinois a landmark album in your musical life?" I seriously doubt a single one of them would answer "no." I told you I'd write a longer sentence.
Illinois, with its Guaraldi-like arrangements, conjures this nostalgia, of early childhood, and being at a lake, and faded color Polaroids...and faded late 80's elementary school-issued textbooks. These light jazz/folk-rock symphonies are so lush and full and wonderful, I've never sat down and listened to Illinois in its entirety and not felt better afterward, like it's healed some ailing invisible part of me.
Yes, magical. Illinois is concrete pillars being laid by downtown workers, logs piled riverside by early settlers, a flickering candle on a dimly lit cathedral wall, a freshly minted station wagon speeding along the freshly paved interstate, magical. This is a clumsy, nearly incoherent, incohesive review, but I'll end it by saying:
I was wrong. I was so very wrong.
The Avalanche
2006 Ashmatic Kitty
Stevens, clearly in some type of hallowed zone during the Illinois recording sessions, recorded so much material for that album, he had enough worthwhile songs left over to release the equally 75-minute album, The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album! the following year. While it's almost immediately apparent that The Avalanche as a collection won't be standing toe-to-toe with Illinois, it's nearly shocking just how many great individual songs Stevens wrote during those original recording sessions. The album's recurring backbone is three alternate versions of Illinois standout, "Chicago," coming in as the 5th, 12th, and 19th tracks on this 21-track album (with the emotional and strangely majestic "Acoustic Version" perhaps even topping the original). The rest of the songs are all originals, most in the same complex, multitude of instruments arrangement style of the jazzy, folky Illinois, with guest vocalists in particular abounding.
With so many standouts, including "The Henney Buggy Band," "Saul Bellow," "No Man's Land," "The Pick-Up" and "Pittsfield" among others, the only thing really holding The Avalanche back from Illinois territory at times is cohesion. And yet, despite the fact that it isn't a cohesive, technically pre-planned album, The Avalanche still holds together...which is an oxymoron. It's a testament to just how skilled of a songwriter Stevens had become by this point, and just how satisfying his style was in the mid 00's, that even the toss-off songs are stellar.
A NOTE: I thought about reviewing Stevens' Christmas albums, as well, but as those are clearly releases he originally intended as gifts for friends and family, it doesn't feel fair to review them as albums. Check out "Holy, Holy, Holy," "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," and "The Friendly Beasts," though, as they are absolutely outstanding.
All Delighted People
2010 Asthmatic Kitty
And then the silence. No new Sufjan albums for five years. How will Sufjan get to Louisiana at this rate? I wondered. During this period, Sufjan announced that the 50 States Project, for which he would create a new album for each state, was a gimmick. My visions of new state music and artwork were tossed to the wayside. Even though Stevens had been testing out songs that referenced locations in Minnesota and Arkansas, among others, he was apparently never serious about making 48 more states albums. I don't fully buy that--using my artist mind, and thinking of my own overly lofty ambitions, I am sure at some point Sufjan Stevens wanted to and thought that he just might make an album for each of the respective 50 states. But alas, no Hawaii, no cool palm tree artwork and songs championing its indigenous peoples. Instead, 2010 brought an entirely new Sufjan to the forefront.
As a prelude to Stevens' then upcoming Age of Adz album, he announced an EP called All Delighted People. I don't consider an hour long album to be an "EP," and I think referring to All Delighted People as such is silly. The "EP" aspect is more of a state of mind, as some of All Delighted People's eight tracks had been around for awhile before its release. Also, the opening title track, nearly 12-minutes in length, gets an eight-minute reprise in the track six spot (creating a bit of listener fatigue in an otherwise solid album). Also...the last track, "Djohariah" is 17-minutes long. All Delighted People is certainly something.
While the actual idea of All Delighted People's music isn't a huge departure from Stevens' previous work, the overall feeling is. The songs all have a bit of a fatalistic, "I'm about to die" feeling to them, with Stevens' voice now containing a slightly aged, weary quality it's never held before (which is...uh...inherent in aging). The album certainly isn't a downer (excluding one track of which I'll go into more detail in a minute), but there's just some strange, new, nearly intangible feeling to these songs. The backing female vocals, once folksy and natural, now sound like an epic Greek chorus. The larger arrangements now lean more heavily on strings than the light-jazz influenced compositions of Stevens' mid-00's work, and there's even a minor classic rock influence now, yet another 1970's musical influence added to Sufjan's repertoire. The shorter tracks are still mostly banjo-centric, but the banjo-playing is less folksy and more straightforward. When the electric guitar interjects, it's missing the spastic edge it held in albums previous, containing more of a strange and haunting beauty here. Even the piano-playing features a spectral quality, more reminiscent of a spooky city recital hall than the centerpiece of a riverside log cabin.
I must admit, I myself was facing some pretty severe life situations where I thought death was a possibility, and I've likely attached some of that fatalistic thinking toward my All Delighted People impressions, but listening now far divorced from those times, that feeling is still there. The album even has a sort of dark and terrifying peak in track five, "The Owl and the Tanager." Again, it's not like the music leading up to the song is bleak or dark, but--to give a childhood metaphor--those four tracks almost have the feeling of a normal day that began with a parental promise of an afternoon spanking. And "The Owl and the Tanager" certainly fulfills that corporal punishment promise, as it features the darkest lyrics and music of Stevens' career by far.
"The Owl and the Tanager," though, is a bit emblematic of the lyrical shift Stevens' music experienced in 2010. The lyrics are far more sensual in nature, referencing bodily sensation and feelings and relationships directly, instead of focusing upon historical references and geography that simply hint around them. Also, while Sufjan's previous albums' lyrics certainly had some subtle homosexual undertones, "The Owl and the Tanager" makes them explicit, while also describing a painful and violent relationship.
As a lead in, the preceding track "From the Mouth of Gabriel" features a grandiose ending, with a soaring, layered choir and Stevens himself singing over a tinkling piano and huge string line:
Your face has changed
I hardly know who you are this time
And when I came into your room
You tried to jump
Now I know this is strange to hear from the mouth of God
It was something like a scene from Mars
In a struggle between loves and lies
The angel kept his face covered for to keep his word
And while I spoke something left from my life
Forget about the past
Be at rest I’ll make things right
And while I held you at best you nearly died
Forget about the past
And I’ll try to make things right
Though the sound of the song isn't dark (it's near angelic), these lyrics reference an attempted suicide in the midst of relational drama...which gives the terrifying, mostly piano, vocal, and scary ambient noise-led "The Owl and the Tananger"'s darkness a precedent. And then come "The Owl and the Tanager"'s tortured lyrics:
All I had hoped for
I kept inside your car
The rabbit in the barn
Most of all I wait
I wait beside the door
I wait beside the door
All I was wrong, trembling in the cage
I was diamonds in the cage
In seven hours I consider death
And your father called to yell at me
"You little boy, you little boy"
Found out you cheated me
I ran behind the barn and
Cut my hands somehow
Blood in the meadowlark
I punched your ears instead
I punched you in the head
You only laughed and laughed and laughed
How I was wrong tingling from the kill
Tickle me until you devil bird you evil still
Slept on my arms, I was sleeping in the sill
I was sleeping in the room with you
You little boy, you little boy
How could you run from me now?
The loneliest chime in the house
The loneliest chime in the house
You let it out, you let it out
Come to me Calvary still
I’m weeding and raking until
I’m bleeding in spite of my love for you
It bruised and bruised my will
Counting alluvial plains
The breathing inside of the range
You touched me inside of my cage
Beneath my shirt your hands embraced me
Come to me feathered and frayed
For I am the ugliest prey
For I am the ugliest prey
The owl, the reckless, reckless praise
You said you’d wait for me
Down by the Tannery Creek
Far out by the clothesline where we used to kiss behind the sheets
Wrapped in a blanket of red
The Owl and the Tanager said
The Owl and the Tanager said
One waits until the hour is death
This...isn't the same old Sufjan. Something's changed, and with All Delighted People, there's a sense that there's no going back.
The Age of Adz
2010 Asthmatic Kitty
Absolutely exhausting. In 2010, my ears had an incredibly difficult time parsing out the layers of electronic noise and waves upon waves of vocals found within The Age of Adz's seemingly insurmountable 75-minutes (what's with Sufjan and 75-minute albums?). All of that chaos, crushing sounds upon crushing sounds, even organic instruments, all on top of each other, oh so much sound for oh so very long. Meanwhile, Sufjan's overly melodramatic lyrics come as a speeding onrush through the aural mess--the relationships, particularly Sufjan's relationship with himself and particularly his romantic relationships emotionally yo-yo violently and I just feel overstimulated every time I listen to it.
I've tried, I've really tried to get into Age of Adz, gotten far past the disappointment of "This doesn't sound like Sufjan" anymore," and still the album's messy musical insanity overwhelms me. It's been a decade now, and I still can't parse it out. I rarely revisit it, and even listening to it for this review is just making me want to go to sleep.
And still, The Age of Adz has its moments: Track eight,"Vesuvius," which makes explicit a certain mythological vibe from earlier in the album, feels like an epic showdown between Stevens and...Stevens. Likewise, "I Want to Be Well," which ends with in a repeated shouting climax of "I'm not fucking around!" (in one of Stevens' rare lyrical utilizations of profanity).
Sufjan has said The Age of Adz, influenced by schizophrenic outsider artist, Royal Robertson, came from bouts of extreme anxiety, as well as Stevens' battle against some kind of debilitating nervous system infection. If Sufjan was trying to recreate those feelings and sensations, he's achieved it, no more so than on the musically bipolar, 25-minute, yes, TWENTY-FIVE-MINUTE(!) closer, "Impossible Soul," which is at once emblematic of The Age of Adz's flaws, and its finest moment.
The song leaps from section to section, Sufjan trading off vocals with My Brightest Diamond's Shara Wroten, as Stevens employs every musical trick he knows and then some for nearly half-an-hour...and it's invigorating! It nearly makes the 50-minutes of nervous-breakdown-inducing chaos that precedes it worthwhile.
Carrie and Lowell
2015 Asthmatic Kitty
And then five more years of silence, only for Stevens to return with something completely different yet again. Sufjan's estranged mother passed away in 2012, after which he experienced a sort of downward spiral. In his own words, to try to get closer to his mother after her death, Stevens experimented in the risky, self-destructive behaviors he knew she had. Eventually, he came out of that period, and crafted a musical document of those times and feelings, Carrie and Lowell.
Carrie and Lowell is the most stripped-down record of Sufjan's career (even more so than Seven Swans), featuring mainly acoustic guitar, piano, and hushed vocals. The lyrics are bleak and difficult, as Stevens sings about substance abuse, suicidal tendencies, relational abuse, and his difficult relationship with his mother, both before and after her death. It's not an album of healing, as Stevens later admitted that he felt like the creation of these songs gave nothing back to him. There's no resolution, no feeling of catharsis. There's only loss, and feelings of sadness, desperation, and confusion. Carrie and Lowell is not exactly the type of album you just throw on for fun. To be honest, I haven't listened to it very many times. It's just not that type of album. However, as a document of grief, the album is honest, skillfully written, haunting and beautiful.
Carrie and Lowell also contains frequent references to locations in Oregon. Stevens spent three summers with his mother and stepfather there, creating lasting memories. Sufjan apparently contemplated naming Carrie and Lowell "Oregon," but the album's producer, Thomas Bartlett, talked him out of it. Selfishly, I would have liked the state naming (alright, three down, 47 to go!), but I see why he ultimately decided against it.
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Comments
It's tough to find a millennial into this sort of music who doesn't hold up Illinois as some sort of landmark.
I feel a profound sense of dumbfoundment.