Music, Music Everywhere
It was quite the musical weekend for me here in the Big Apple. Walking down Madison Avenue on Saturday, I almost bumped into Larry Mullen, Jr., the drummer from U2, which is a pretty cool celebrity sighting.
Then last night, I went to see
Sufjan Stevens at Town Hall, the wonderful old lecture hall. (I love their old photos of Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Bob Dylan, Hubert Humphrey, Eleanor Roosevelt and the like. What a bunch of pinkos! And I mean that in a good way.)
Stevens, in case you don't know, is a young singer-songwriter who has embarked on a project of making theme records devoted to all 50 states. So far, the 31-year-old has done two, "Greetings from Michigan—The Great Lake State," and "Come On Feel the Illinoize," which is a little rock pun for those of you who will remember your
Quiet Riot. They are eccentric, thoughtful, spiritual, ambitious, complicated, challenging, and beautiful; they are brilliant. His music is impossible to classify. Sometimes he sounds like Gershwin or Aaron Copland, other times like an African-American church choir, sometimes like Pete Seeger, sometimes Nirvana—his music is a tapestry of American history, both sonically and lyrically. And his history ain't so bad, either.
Stevens is also a devout Christian, which is one reason he's working on
a five-CD set of Christmas songs, some classic, some original. He played a new one last night, "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever," whose title belies its beauty. Meanwhile, fans tossed around inflatable Santa Clauses. A truly weird moment.
Onstage last night, Stevens made it all gell. He was surrounded by as many as 14 others on stage—violinists, a cellist, a horn section, drummer, guitarist, bass player, etc. He played guitar, banjo and piano. Everyone wore wings—to symbolize, Stevens said, "flight and transcendence," which were indeed themes of several songs played. One song used Superman as an allegory; another revolved around a mysterious winged beast Stevens claimed he and a friend had seen one night when they were kids; another involved a heavenly vision in which, after a fire caused by a bolt of lightning burned down his childhood house, Stevens looked to the sky and saw seven swans, with seven horns, "playing a
John Philip Sousa march." They played for hours, Stevens said, and it was so beautiful that he and his family could do nothing but stand and watch and listen.
His music was kind of like that. There were times I felt like I was hearing the overture to a musical; other times, a symphony. (I wonder what
David Byrne of Talking Heads, who was in the crowd, thought.) I've never heard anything quite like it. My favorite was "Oh Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!"
Can someone please nominate this guy for a MacArthur Award? He really is a genius.
Sufjan Stevens: If you look closely, you can see the wings.
