From Illinois to The Avalanche: Sufjan Stevens at the Crossroads
By Rachel Leibrock
Pop Culture Press
Fall/Winter 2006
Issue 63

Sufjan Stevens knows a Sufjan Stevens song when he hears it.

Seems kind of obvious but sometimes, Stevens says, it takes time, distance and even a period of creative stillness to really hear - and recognize - his own work.

“Right now, I’m in a season of not writing anything and I’m approaching (my music) as a listener,” Stevens explains, talking from his Brooklyn home on the eve of a national tour. “I heard that at one point during his career, Chopin heard someone play one of his sonatas and didn’t recognize it as his own - it’s a strange phenomenon.”

Such a moment came for Stevens as he sifted through the dozens of songs that didn’t make the cut on 2005’s Illinois. Listening to the bits and pieces tucked away on his computer, all that he’d left behind surprised Stevens. So did what it revealed about his songwriting themes and musical patterns.

“A lot of the songs were repetitive and I could see how I write particular narrative songs that are in the first person about childhood or feeling trapped or about the lack of parental responsibility,” he says. “I heard ‘The Mistress Witch’ and (thought) ‘that’s just a typical Sufjan Stevens song,’” he says. “Sometimes it’s funny to separate yourself from your work and then re-approach it as a stranger.”

For the Michigan native, making music revolves around a constant cycle of construction and deconstruction, inspiration and reinvention. Over the course of seven albums, including this year’s The Avalanche, which features Illinois outtakes, Stevens has carved a niche with songs that are, at once, intensely intimate and broadly historic, musically ambitious and reassuringly accessible.

The oeuvre reflects Stevens upbringing and experiences. The 31-year-old artist grew up listening to his stepfather’s Beatles and Love records before hitting his own period of adolescent angst and rebellion - a time that, perhaps, took a bit more uber-teenage effort in Stevens’ freewheeling, bohemian household. (For a time, Stevens’ family belonged to a cult and the singer’s name, which means “comes with a sword,” was reportedly bestowed upon him by the group’s founder.) In junior high, Stevens picked up the oboe and spent a year at an arts academy studying chamber and ensemble music. In later years he explored classical and opera.

A college-era introduction to cult folkie Nick Drake, though, prompted a return to his roots. Picking up a guitar and pushing “play” on a four-track recorder, he started writing and recording the framework for his 2000 solo debut, A Sun Came. During that time, Stevens, who also plays the banjo, drums, and myriad other instruments, performed in the folk/rock band Marzuki as well as the Danielson Famile, the Christian-themed indie pop ensemble.

It was Stevens’ third album Greetings From Michigan that ultimately earned the musician national acclaim. The sprawling yet focused disc was a beautifully crafted, lyrically intricate homage to Stevens’ home state and the start of what Stevens described as the ambitious “50 states project.” Illinois, which followed on the heels of 2004’s Seven Swans, followed suit on the American history book theme with subject matter that, alternately, played like history lessons and personal memories. Here, songs touched on everything from family conflict (”Decatur”) to serial killers (”John Wayne Gacy Jr.”).

But, although Stevens has talked at length in the past about his plan to tackle each state (”Rhode Island will be a seven-inch single - because it’s the smallest state,” he once joked), the singer-songwriter now prefers the subject to be off-limits, saying simply, “No, I don’t like to talk about that.”

Stevens will, thankfully, discuss his latest album, a 21-track collection of outtakes that, despite its humble beginnings as an anthology of castoffs, still shines with cohesive narration and an exquisite, distilled sound.

The Avalanche opens with its title track which, with its gorgeous instrumental construct featuring piano, horns, and vibraphones, becomes a bittersweet coming-home story. “The Henny Buggy Band” chronicles a family road trip, while three new renditions of the Illinois track “Chicago” include a stripped-down acoustic version and an “adult contemporary” rendering. It is, Stevens says, anything but a jumbled assortment of leftovers.

“These aren’t throwaway tracks, that’s why I decided to release them as a (proper) album instead of just online,” Stevens says. “This was a fun project and it didn’t feel like I’d be properly honoring the songs if I just put them out on the Internet.”

The process was like rummaging through old photo albums and memorabilia, and the result, an album not quite as “preoccupied
with geography.”

“These songs are less philosophical - I see that now, after the fact (of writing them),” he says. “And that’s one of the reasons I didn’t initially use them, because they weren’t quite as focused or grounded. Illinois is very grounded in the earth and geography. Even though there are songs about extraterrestrials, it’s mostly songs about cities and landscapes.”

The Avalanche is tied together with a more ethereal, yet no less real thread. “The album is more abstract, more nebulous and sublime - not as fully realized,” he opines. “But as songs, I found they were doing things that were interesting to me. So, even though they didn’t fit in contextually on Illinois, I cut them and put them together for this record.

“I still wanted it to feel comprehensive and cohesive and to me it does - it’s more philosophical, ” he says.

Philosophical, yes, but that’s close to another verboten Sufjan Stevens topic: Religion. Stevens’ publicist even goes as far as to suggest not bringing up the topic during the interview and when it is (delicately) broached, Stevens replies with a polite, but firm, “I’d rather not talk about that.”

His reluctance to talk about faith is, perhaps, justified considering the way the fiercely private subject often threatens to overshadow the singer’s public persona. Although songs such as the Seven Swans cut “Abraham” dive head-on into spiritual matters (”Lake or lamb / There is none to harm / When the angel came, you had raised your arm”), Stevens’ more recent works seem to only skim the subject like ripples on water.

Regardless of topic, most of Stevens’ songs are defined by the same literary construct. Writing a song, says Stevens, who holds an M.F.A. in creative writing, is much like writing a short story: The craft requires an eye and ear for language, rhythm, and narrative.

“It’s very similar in that I’m attempting to evoke a setting or character in the song,” he says. And, he adds, despite its comparative brevity, the song format is more expressive.

“It’s more lyrical and poetic and there’s more freedom to experiment with language,” he says. “It allows you to be more abstract and to use the inflections of your voice and the voice you choose to sing in - be it a falsetto or head or chest voice - all of that can really affect the shape of the song in a way that you really can’t with the written word.”

Stevens has, in a sense, abandoned text.

“Of course the sentence has its own music and rhythm but it’s more mundane and therefore more difficult, ” he says. “I can’t write fiction anymore, I’m just writing songs.”

Actually, Stevens isn’t writing at all right now (his next release, in fact, is a multi-media boxed set featuring Christmas songs, most of them previously recorded). Instead, his current focus is on the complexities of sound and arrangement as he prepares for the upcoming tour, which features new symphonic arrangements for the singer/songwriter’s lush, delicate compositions. The resulting sound is rich with horns, woodwinds and strings.

“It’s more dramatic and romantic (than Illinois),” he avers. “I mean that in a conservative ‘romantic period’ because some of the arrangements feel like Stravinksy.”

Stevens pauses, thinks about the concept for a moment and then (somewhat) corrects himself.

“It’s like a dumbed-down, Readers Digest version of classical music,” he says.

Dumbed-down?

“OK, maybe not dumbed-down,” Stevens corrects himself yet again, this time with a laugh. “Some of it reminds me of Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, but I’m really embarrassed to make that analogy,” he says. “Those were incredible composers and I don’t want to compare myself to them.”

Still, Stevens can’t help but get excited when talking about the process of giving his songs new life.

“It’s been so much fun during rehearsals - it’s like I’m the conductor for band class, writing all these parts, working them out and trying to change them to accommodate the music,” he says. “It’s almost like I’m covering my own music.”

When Stevens does start writing again, the artist hopes to push his music further into the symphonic arena.

“I don’t want to keep writing the way that I have,” he says. “I don’t really know exactly what that means yet but I feel like the outtakes record and the tour will satisfy a certain resolution for a particular type of writing. I think I’ll have come to terms with it by the end of this tour.”