Seven Swans a-swimming
By Jose Lourenco

Sufjan Stevens taps mythology
Makes Toronto visit on Tuesday

Sufjan Stevens and his swan-costumed singers are now embarked on “The 50 States Project.”

“Hello, Sufjan Stevens’ room.”

His spoken voice was far softer than I thought it would be. Recorded, his timbre is all lilt and melody, his cadence quiet and playful, but … wow. It was as if I wasn’t talking to the same person.

“Sufjan?”

“No, this is his friend Kristine, he’s just away from the phone for two minutes.”

Ah. My mistake.

It wouldn’t be the last error of the interview.

See, like “Ralph Fiennes,” or “Steve Buscemi,” “Sufjan Stevens” is a name that doesn’t accurately render phonetically. If Kristine hadn’t clued me in, I would have called the man “Suff-jann” for the entirety of our discussion.

“I say ‘Soof-yawn,’ but it’s still up for debate,” says the calm and affable Stevens, speaking from San Diego. “I’ve changed the way I pronounced it over the last 10 years, but one thing stays the same; I’ve never pronounced the ‘J’ as a ‘J’.”

That one very soft letter seems even more constant when compared to the Detroit-born Stevens musical output: four albums in four years, each sounding very little like the others.

His debut, 2000’s style-allsorts, A Sun Came, was followed in 2001 by Enjoy Your Rabbit, a pop-rooted noise excursion that wouldn’t sound out of place at Musique Actuelle.

Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State is a wintry record that brings to mind Vince Guaraldi exploring polyrhythmic loops alongside breathy friends who escaped band class with brass and winds in hand.

It’s also the disc that brought the 29-year-old songwriter a moderate fame. Aside from winning mass critical support and peer boosters like Daniel Smith of Danielson Famile (who produced & recorded Steven’s follow-up, Seven Swans), it has seeds of mythology - a common device for the transplanted Brooklyner - sown into its liner notes.

Michigan is the first in a planned series of recordings dubbed “The 50 States Project,” wherein Stevens will stereophonically celebrate each state in the union. Next up, Illinois, which is about one-third complete.

The aforementioned Seven Swans is his latest effort. A naked testament to faith, the instrumentation rarely strays far beyond pretty, folksy banjo/acoustic guitar/piano arrangements.

Live, however, the songs are fattened with drums, bass, Wurlitzer, electric guitar, two female backup singers and fluffy, downy swan costumes.

“Or maybe we’ll wear Michigan Militia uniforms,” says Stevens. “We haven’t figured it out yet.”

Of course, not everything on the tour is planned. And the songwriter’s band doesn’t always consult with its leader.

“We just played NYU in New York, and sometimes we end the set with a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The fire alarm went off as we were playing, but no one in the audience would leave. They started clapping along to the fire alarm. I tried to get the promoter to get everyone out of the room because I thought it was something serious, but when I returned to the stage, my band had started jamming to the fire alarm, which is so different than what I normally do.

“I suddenly realized what happens to my band when I’m not there, and what happens to NYU students in the absence of authority.”

He’s not so far removed from student life, himself.

A graduate of, and sometimes-instructor at, the fiction-writing program at The New School in New York City, Stevens’ words are found on pages much larger than those of CD booklets.

“My next big project is a novel in stories, like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Separate stories, all about the area. A lot of it’s about Michigan, rural northern Michigan, and the small towns I’ve created.”

Who: Sufjan Stevens, with Awry and Nikolai Dungar
Where: Lee’s Palace, 529 Bloor W.
When: Tuesday @ 9: 30 p.m.
Tickets: $14 @ Rotate This, Soundscapes and the Horseshoe