Intellectual Property: The Terra Firma of Sufjan Stevens
By Sam Roudman

A FABLED TROPE IN INDIE ROCK mythology is the figure of the slacker:the ramshackle and hirsute outcast with the scratched guitar slung over his shoulder. Talented? Yes. Motivated? Nuh-uh. But alas our failure-fated hero trudges on through the hallowed halls of underdog fame, moping and nudging at the zeitgeist while cursing its existence.

In his six years as a solo artist, Sufjan has delivered five albums of disarming and intricately arranged melodies. In 2003 he began a project to catalog all 50 of the United States in album form, beginning with a sedate and personal account of his home, Michigan. But the full promise of the project was realized last year, when Illinois entered the fray with all the jaw-dropping bombastic splendor of a child’s first fireworks show.This was Americana cut from whole cloth; a proud and chaotic mingling of histories great and tiny, where everyday laborers rub elbows with literary giants, zombies, immigrants, superheroes, UFO’s, and child murderers (don’t miss the most touching ode to John Wayne Gacy ever written). It was a wittingly multifaceted tribute to the legend of the Middle American can-do spirit that seems all too easy to forget these days. Steven’s money was where his mouth was, and ever since, the caretakers of the Great Tome of Indie Rock Mythology have been scrambling to write the story of a new hero. First name: Sufjan. Middle name: Ambition.

Mini UK sat down with Mr. Stevens on the eve of the release of The Avalanche, a set of outtakes and alternate versions from Illinois. Clocking in at 75 minutes, this collection is hefty, not just in length, but in depth and consideration; a peek at the working processes of one of the most talented (and prolific) musicians around.

What is the origin of The Avalanche?

These are songs I had written for the Illinois record and didn’t use. Some of them were in finished form, maybe five or six of them were completely done, and the rest were either demos or sketches that I had left on my computer or my 8-track. At the end of last year I to the old material and was really just archiving it, but I started to spend some time with it.

The Avalanche’s cover declares it’s “shamelessly compiled by Sufjan Stevens.” Should this be considered a complete album?

I feel like it’s a complete album based on two variables: it’s long enough to be an album, and I feel there’s enough new, interesting material to warrant a second listening. It should be listened to as an appendix to Illinois.We were going to call it “Illinois Part Two,” but that seemed unfair.There’s a real divergence in themes and territories written about on these outtakes.

Were there particular themes you were trying to focus on in The Avalanche as opposed to those in Illinois?

For me I feel there’s less personal conviction in The Avalanche material than on Illinois. I think there are particular themes on the first record that are consistent, and sort of reappear from song to song, one of those being travel: Traveling through time; through a particular region; stopping and taking claim to an area… I think there is a sense of movement in the original record, and The Avalanche doesn’t seem to have that feel.

Still, there are certain elements that propel it along. The three versions of the song “Chicago,” for instance. How did those come about?

Two of them were written originally for the Illinois record: the “adult contemporary easy listening version,” and the acoustic version. These were recordings I had done thinking they would come up on the Illinois record but they didn’t make it. The last one I did afterwards. It may indicate more about my working habits than any kind of theme on the record though. I’m more interested in The Avalanche as a technician and as a musician, and less as a listener and a reader of concepts. I think the “Chicago” songs represent how I go about creating, writing, constructing and arranging material. I realized that there is more than one perspective you can take on any of these songs.

Much of your work is connected to a sense of place. How do you achieve this?

The music always comes first. The music has priority, the music has the upper hand, and I think it generates a particular meaning. It is my work as a musician to comprehend that meaning, so I’ll write a lot of songs without really knowing what they’re about.

I find - for some reason; I don’t know why - that geography and place are very important to me, and I begin to project that onto the song. Then there is this mergence of ideas between the song and myself, and that’s when it starts to clarify, and starts to sort of cultivate and germinate into a full-fledged song. I don’t know what it is - perhaps it’s a revelation. Music is an abstraction; it’s just melody and sounds. Then through workmanship and performance and practice, you begin to create meaning out of it.

You used the word ‘revelation.’ Would you describe writing music as a spiritual or religious experience?

I’m not so comfortable with the word religious, but it’s definitely spiritual; there’s definitely a divine encounter, and I’m not sure where that comes from. In the Christian tradition things are created by speaking: so God said, “Let there be light,” and then there was light. There was a sound heard to create an object, and then we’re created out of the earth and out of the dust. The sounds of the natural world are overwhelming. We come from that, and that’s really important. There’s some revelation of sound and of meaning in the way that we produce our art, and we’re mimicking that.

Do you have any plans to tour for the album?

The material on The Avalanche is mainly meant to be heard on record. I don’t think I would ever spend the time and energy to recreate these songs for the stage. I think performance has always been my weakest link. I’m not a natural performer and I’m not crazy about touring. But it has been the most exciting challenge for me, because there’s so much to learn from playing live onstage with other musicians in front of an audience. It’s such a dynamic experience. I’ve learned to reckon with the notion that I’m the entertainer, and it’s my job when I’m on stage to entertain.That’s kind of why we started doing the cheerleading thing, to augment the crowd performance side of things.

What exactly is the “cheerleading thing”?

I toured last year with a band and we called ourselves the “Illinoisemakers.” We kinda presented the songs as they are, and then did a few cheers in the middle. We even did routines; we had human pyramids at one point.

How did you prepare for making the Illinois album in the first place?

I’m grounded in the written material, so I did a lot of reading. Mostly from books and magazines and researching online, and then talking to people who lived there. I had done a lot of road trips through Illinois, and when I was younger in college I went to Chicago a lot, so it was just an assemblage of research material and memory put together and rendered through my imagination. A lot of it is based on history and fact and place and geography, but then it’s sort of reconfigured through my imagination. The whole record is really a fictional account, a fabrication of some kind.

Have you thought about how the music will change as you approach different places?

It’ll change dramatically. On Illinois there is a pageantry that reminds me of John Phillip Sousa, and marching bands, and patriotic parades-that was the sensibility I was trying to evoke. But, that changes when you go further west. In Plains states like Arizona or New Mexico there are vast amounts of land, very little vegetation, and it’s very dry and hot. That kind of ecology and meteorology and landscape affects everything, from the kind of people who live and settle there, to the civilizations that develop, to the kinds of food they eat and the music they produce. It’s just natural to reckon with that as you write about different places.

Have you found people clamoring for you to write about their state?

It happens all the time.What I find most interesting is that my proposition has inspired all kinds of civic pride all over the U.S. People start telling me anecdotes about their small town or their university, their regional flower festival, or their beauty pageant.There is this sense of pride and ownership; feelings of a stronger identity of where they come from. I think that’s interesting, because I never intended this to be about civic pride, but it’s inspired a little bit of that all over the country.

Do you have a plan as to where you want to go next with the state project?

I finally do, yes. But I probably shouldn’t say.

Well, you probably shouldn’t, but if you wanted to, this would be a great time to do it.

I’m not confident enough to make any public statements.

Fair enough.

STATELY WISDOM

Sufjan takes a (Barnes &) Noble stand for the cream of U.S. regional fiction.

Winesburg, Ohio
BY SHERWOOD ANDERSON
A collection of related stories about the odd, idiosyncratic, and lonely dimensions of a small midwestern town based on Anderson’s hometown of Clyde, Ohio.

The Adventures of Augie March
BY SAUL BELLOW
Bellow’s greatest literary exploit, a monumental Bildungsroman entrenched in the depression-era collage of Chicago.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
BY ANNIE DILLARD
A wise and philosophical meditation on the natural world, based on observations in and around the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Light in August
BY WILLIAM FAULKNER
Many of Faulkner’s novels take place in the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, widely considered one of the most vast and encyclopedic fictional creations ever.

The Collected Stories
BY GRACE PALEY
Grace Paley summons all the hot humid hubris of New York City summers in concise stories settled by activist women, Jewish grandmothers, unfaithful husbands and mouthy children. Her titles are unbeatable: “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” “In Time Which Made a Monkey of Us All,” to name two.