New Sufjan Stevens EP available now

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I say we just do Michigan, Seven Swans, Illinoise, Age of Adz and Carrie & Lowell. Maybe an extra round too for a couple Xmas songs (haven't got there yet). Vote for your favs from each then a final.
 


It's nice to have this version that approaches the live sound of the song (minus the epic ending).
 
I'm in my douchey seat, guys. :hyper:

A little weirded out that so many guys here are Sufjan doppelgängers. Aren't college students a little old to be dressing up like the guy on stage? I'm a lady in a cool dress sitting in a sea of Sufjans and Beardy McPlaids.
 
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Stunning. Gorgeous. Perfect, though apparently a song or two shorter than other shows on the tour but can't say I blame him since the theater seats 2000 and was about only half full (NM sucks sometimes, but maybe people are just poor rather than uninterested). But it was still one of the two best shows I've ever seen in NM (the other being Arcade Fire).

There were no cell phones filming within my view. Just a rapt and totally silent audience.

I could whine about acoustic Chicago (when everything they needed to do the full version appeared to be there, more or less) or the fact that I didn't love the ambient arrangement of Fourth of July as much as I loved the other ambient arrangements, but that would be silly. Because it was all so gorgeous.

Death With Dignity, All of Me, To Be Alone With You, definite highlights.

Vesuvius into Blue Bucket was breathtaking.

He told funny stories about his childhood ("I have a bunch of siblings - I mean, a lot - there are at least six or seven of us") and you easily got the feeling that not only is he brilliant, but a damn nice person, too. Everything about his onstage persona was engaging. I just love the guy.

setlist
1. Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)
2. Death With Dignity
3. Should Have Known Better
4. Drawn to the Blood
5. Eugene
6. John My Beloved
7. The Only Thing
8. Fourth of July
9. No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross
10. Carrie & Lowell
11. All of Me Wants All of You
12. For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
13. The Dress Looks Nice on You
14. To Be Alone With You
15. Futile Devices
16. Vesuvius
17. Blue Bucket of Gold

encore
18. John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
19. Chicago (Acoustic Version)
 
Damn I would love to see this show again. I was thinking of flying to Orlando to stay with some relatives and see him there, but looks like it can't happen.
 
Sufjan about to start in 20 minutes. Perfect theme for Halloween, I'd say.
 
Enjoy, gump! JT posted John Wayne Gacy Jr on fb today, saying it was a Halloween song, and I'd have to agree!

joyfulgirl said:
Stunning. Gorgeous. Perfect, though apparently a song or two shorter than other shows on the tour but can't say I blame him since the theater seats 2000 and was about only half full (NM sucks sometimes, but maybe people are just poor rather than uninterested). But it was still one of the two best shows I've ever seen in NM (the other being Arcade Fire).

There were no cell phones filming within my view. Just a rapt and totally silent audience.

I could whine about acoustic Chicago (when everything they needed to do the full version appeared to be there, more or less) or the fact that I didn't love the ambient arrangement of Fourth of July as much as I loved the other ambient arrangements, but that would be silly. Because it was all so gorgeous.

Death With Dignity, All of Me, To Be Alone With You, definite highlights.

Vesuvius into Blue Bucket was breathtaking.

He told funny stories about his childhood ("I have a bunch of siblings - I mean, a lot - there are at least six or seven of us") and you easily got the feeling that not only is he brilliant, but a damn nice person, too. Everything about his onstage persona was engaging. I just love the guy.

setlist
1. Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)
2. Death With Dignity
3. Should Have Known Better
4. Drawn to the Blood
5. Eugene
6. John My Beloved
7. The Only Thing
8. Fourth of July
9. No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross
10. Carrie & Lowell
11. All of Me Wants All of You
12. For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
13. The Dress Looks Nice on You
14. To Be Alone With You
15. Futile Devices
16. Vesuvius
17. Blue Bucket of Gold

encore
18. John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
19. Chicago (Acoustic Version)
Click to expand...

:up::up::up: He's playing I Want to Be Well on occasion, too. Since there's no chance he'll just whip out Impossible Soul I would be very very happy to hear Vesuvius or I Want to Be Well to assuage my passion for Age of Adz.

I love his stories and stage presence too! Seems like a really good dude.
 
He closed the show with a cover of freaking Hotline Bling and it was hilarious.

I Want to Be Well was amazing. Very different arrangement than last tour.
 
cobl04 said:
Omfg are you for real ������������������ God I hope video of that surfaces


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
Click to expand...

I recorded at least a minute of it. Will try to post it tomorrow.

edit: Actually, someone did that already:

 
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Soul singer, he was the opening act for that should. He was good, not great, if you like soul. Reminded a bit of some of The Weeknd's newer stuff, but not as catchy.
 
Barely a day passes where I'm not singing some song from or thinking about Age of Adz. The following just absolutely slayed me:

And I would say I love you
But saying it out loud
Is hard
So I won't say it at all;
And I won't stay very long
But you are the light I needed all along
I think of you as my brother, although that sounds dumb
And words
Are futile
devices.
 
I listened to Michigan again today and decided why it really is that I prefer it to Illinois. Whereas the latter is driven by research and historical references, Michigan is extremely lived in and natural in its lyricism. He's from Detroit and spent much of his life in the state, so he really captures the mindset of its citizens through his storytelling. Songs like Flint, Romulus and Holland are harrowing and hopeless without being tied to any story particular to the state. He even perfects a plainspoken dialect for his characters.

All the time we spent in bed
Counting miles before we set
Fall in love and fall apart
Things will end before they start

Sleeping on Lake Michigan
Factories and marching bands
Lose our clothes in summer time
Lose ourselves to lose our minds
In the summer heat, I might

The best songs on Illinois do that as well; without being tied to the state concept, they transport you and allow you to meet new people. Chicago, Casimir Pulaski Day, Predatory Wasp all nail that. Other songs like Night Zombies, Man of Metropolis, and the million and one instrumentals lose that center and feel unnecessary to me.
 
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:up: I need to spend a lot more time with Michigan; you've clearly been more tied to it and Illinoise, and you're an older fan than me, too. Whereas I've been more interested in Age of Adz and Carrie & Lowell (after a period of being very in love with Illinoise). (I wonder if that's kind of why he dumped the States project thing though... Michigan he knew well, but after Illinoise he realised he'd have to do tons of research to continue to make it work.)

I've barely listened to Michigan, but I really, really wish people talked more about Vito's Ordination Song. That's on my Sufjie Rushmore. Rest in my arms / sleep in my bed / there's a design to what I did and said, I love that line.

I'm offended you find Man of Metropolis superfluous, I fucking love that song. But yes, I agree that songs like Night Zombies get old. (I think The Tallest Man is the worst offender though. By that point of the album I'm fucking over that sound and it goes for seven minutes. It's a shame because the last instrumental, Out of Egypt, is really good.)

I said to a friend today that I fucking love Casimir Pulaski Day so much. The second it starts, that acoustic guitar, it feels like a long, deep, satisfying, meditative breath in.
 
Yeah, I'm part of the large group of fans that jumped on the bandwagon in 2005-2006. Illinois was all the rage, it was even bigger than Carrie & Lowell, but as a folk fan I was more into Michigan and Seven Swans. The entire Illinois era set him apart not just as a songwriter, but as an artist with overt ambition and personality and a lot of people grabbed on to that. It only makes sense that the first true followup to that was Age of Adz, which is the caffeinated end of Illinois at full tilt.

Fun fact: I have been to Holland, MI. WAMPIRE/Unknown Mortal Orchestra/Foxygen played a gig at Hope College, which is where Sufjan went for university. It's a lovely little college town with a pronounced hush on weekday evenings. Holland, the song, is imbued with a fear of impending loss, a subconscious existential fear that serves as a backdrop for summertime fun. Sufjan told a lovely story about it in an interview:

This was the summer it got so hot we put a fan in each window. At night we teamed up with the Palestinian students and stole tulips from Centennial Park. We used them as garnishes: we arranged bouquets on table ends and desktops.

We burned a wicker chair on the beach at night. We cooked steaks and pork chops on sticks over the fire. We went skinny-dipping. We huddled under the towels. We told stories about our fathers, about our first kiss, about that one uncle who was always drunk at family reunions.

We bought guitars and accordions and played them under blankets in the park. We tried to follow the Dutch dancers. We mowed lawns and stole flags from construction sites and kissed on the lips at the drinking fountain. We drank Boone’s Sangria and cried and cried and cried on the couch.

We sewed shirts for our friends, with decorative borders made from ribbons, with zippers, with billowing collars, with floral patterns. Nothing fit right. We went around shirtless, even the skinny ones, even the fat ones, even the ones with terrific arms and shoulders.

We took our time talking things out; we listened carefully, with a serious look. We prayed. We read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. We tried very hard to understand this.

We went to a church that was in English and Spanish. We tried very hard to understand this.

We made omelets on the weekends. We whittled wood. We knitted hats. We smoked cigarettes. We gave each other gifts. Elaborate, handmade, complicated passive aggressive gifts.

We were afraid to be left behind. We were afraid to be loved. We were afraid this would come to an end, as all things do. We sat on the couch and cried and cried and cried.
Click to expand...

It's this side of Sufjan that I'm attached to at this stage. He's tremendously gifted at slice of life storytelling and it's those little details that made Carrie & Lowell more than a requiem, turning it into a living, breathing work of art.
 
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Maybe I'm the only one who prefers Seven Swans to both Michigan and Illinois. Granted I am extremely sentimental about that album, but the songs and scope hold up really well. It's a rare artist who can make a folk song like All the Trees of the Field sound so epic. There's an atmosphere to that album that is palpable, even more so than the two state records.
 
iron yuppie said:
Maybe I'm the only one who prefers Seven Swans to both Michigan and Illinois. Granted I am extremely sentimental about that album, but the songs and scope hold up really well. It's a rare artist who can make a folk song like All the Trees of the Field sound so epic. There's an atmosphere to that album that is palpable, even more so than the two state records.
Click to expand...


:up:
Seven Swans is top 3 Sufjan album for me.


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
I've been listening to Illinois lately. What do you guys think of "John Wayne Gacy Jr."? Such a disturbing and striking, yet beautiful song. Definitely top 5 Sufjan song for me, but darn, it's hard to listen to sometimes.
This song really hits me hard and makes me thing about demons I battle in my own life. Just because we may not act out the monster's inside of us, doesn't mean they aren't there. It greatly puts things in perspective
These lyrics in particular are stunning.
"And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid"
I could spend hours just trying to dissect this song.


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
Yeah when I first fell in love with Sufjan back in March or so of last year, I obsessed over that song. I spent probably the next four days reading everything I could on John Wayne Gacy Jnr. (I even corrected LM, who thought it was about a serial killer's son.) Harrowing stuff.

My favourite part about it is the end. Those last lines are astonishing, but it doesn't end there - Sufjan then takes a really nervous breath out as the music drops out, like even he has just been overcome by how confronting the subject matter is.
 
I actually listened to the "EP" for which this thread originally appeared. It's pretty great. I put EP in brackets because it's ludicrous to call it an EP when it's nearly an hour long. Heirloom is so fucking beautiful, kind of reminded me of Gagging Order. The title track is good too, not sure it earns its 12 minutes, but it's good, in fact, pretty much everything is good aside from The Owl and the Tanager which I found a bit boring (can't remember it live either, but seeing him three days in a row in a couple of weeks, so I'm sure I'll get acquainted with it).

I really liked Djohariah, though. That's a memorable song.

Also, I randomly found this, which is hilarious Sufjan Is An Insensitive Name | Patrol
 
Is "Age of Adz" (track) terrible or great? I'm not sure. Part of it makes me want to rip my ears out, but then other parts are phenomenal. But in order to appreciate the good parts, you must endure the awfulness as well. I've listened to it over and over again, but I'm still not sure. Any other opinions of the song?


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
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