Sufjan Stevens is definitely in a league of his own. A colleague just asked me what kind of music it was and I honestly couldn’t tell her. His music before ‘The Age of Adz’ was kind of folky with a twist, and a bit too sweet for my taste most of the time.
The present is different. The shy boy has blossomed into a blazingly proud swan. Flapping his gigantic white wings, he owns the stage and commands his audience into rapturous delight. They’re dancing, albeit on the square half yard that the sold out venue condemns them to.
He dances too. The flickering UV lights create an eerie vision of a mechanical puppet from the neon colour blocks on his black clothes. He jumps up and down to the relentless beats left and right, two drummers working miracles with the complex material of the demanding songs. I stand in awe of all these fine musicians, trombones, keyboards and guitars too. Like a big band but edgier and smoother at the same time.
‘I want to be well’ gets my goose bumps on with its palpable intensity. Sufjan’s gaze is serious. It must be hard to bare your soul to people you barely see, let alone know. The crowd welcomes his honesty with appreciative attention and loud cheers afterwards. A gentle acoustic song about his sister (and anyone’s sister for that matter) makes for a bittersweet intermezzo. We catch a chatty side to the singer. But the best is yet to come.
You can hear a pin drop during the first tentative notes of ‘Impossible Soul’, Sufjan’s magnum epos that clocks in at 25:34 minutes on the album. We all couldn’t believe he would be able to pull this one off live but there it is. And it’s absolutely breathtaking! This is not a song, it’s a cosmos with all its melodic intricacies and stories of love and loss, and Sufjan even dons a cosmonaut costume that reminds me of Peter Gabriel in early Genesis (giving away my age there). More wings and wigs, more jumping fun, dancers taking front stage, a pink rabbit playing trombone. If this sounds like mayhem, think again – this show with all its fascinating projections on see through drapes is fabulously orchestrated and controlled. It’s the party you always wanted to attend but never got invited to.
And balloons! Hundreds of them, big ones and small ones coming down on the ecstatic crowd. Loved it! Whatever could succeed such a climax? We’re made to believe nothing will and the final (?) applause goes on for over ten minutes. Then Sufjan and his troupe, changed into their daily gear, take ‘Chicago’ (yes, the folky hit song from his 2005 album ‘Illinoise’) into one big sing-along encore.
So what kind of music is it? It has beautifully crafted songs with complex structures, layers of singing and not your average instruments. It borrows from rock, folk, funk as well as classical music. I’d suggest you just give it a listen.
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