Sufjan Stevens Greetings From Michigan

Is this record a sincere love letter or some kind of ironic statement? I assess my home state with open eyes, but don't really feel up to listening to a record that slags on Michigan. Any album that begins with a song about Flint must have its merits.

For what it's worth, devoting an entire concept album to one's home state (whether it's Michigan or Idaho) seems pretty intriguing. Beats droning on about some deaf, dumb and blind kid playing pinball.

MICHIGAN is the inaugural entry of THE 50 STATES, a cumulative recording project by Sufjan Stevens unparalleled in its panoramic enterprise: a record for each state! You think he's kidding, don't you?

Yeah, agreed. I really hope he doesn't do anymore.

Again, I like all those song titles - well, except for the dumb "Say Yes" one, at lesat. But can you outline what some of the references in the songs are? The songs, when I heard them (inasmuch as I could listen to them) seemed entirely vague and generic; they could have been about ANYWHERE. But again, maybe I missed something.

"Once a great places. Now a prison.
All I can say. All I can do.
People Mover: Bad decision.
From suburban. Now a prison."

There's also a "We Didn't Start The Fire" style call out of Detroit-related people and places.

"Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Maire":

Oh Sturgeon Bay!
Covered Completely in sand
And covered in sun."

"Holland":

"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"

etc...

Not that his lyrics necessarily present particularly insightful ideas about the state. But there are specific references.

* fwiw, it's a reference to a 1980s Mich. (board of tourism?) slogan/campaign.

Well, there you have it.... Is there anything about Father Coughlin? That'd be a pretty good twee subject, what with the depression-era anti-semitism and all.

Probably the wrong thread, but there was some indie song I heard like 4 or 5 years ago with the opening line, "I headed south from Detroit / away from the cold and from you." I wish I could figure out what that was... I always thought that was one of the best Michigan-specific lyrics I'd heard.

(That "streets of South Detroit" line in Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'", however, never made ANY sense.)

The other half realizes that many of you didn't have the experience of being entirely disarmed by this guy -- expectation of charm completely undercuts its possibility, and I kind of wish we hadn't reviewed it now. ILM fave Matt LeMay and I went to see some show at the North Six over the summer, and as an opener Sufjan and about ten chicks/dudes got up on stage wearing boy scout outfits. In truth I thought it was a local troop of older, perhaps autistic or otherwise severely retarded scouts who needed a little more time to get through the program, and this belief was helped by the fact that the trumpet player had a comical overbite.

It had gimmick written all over it, and we were all set to leave for another Stoli (the official drink of PFM) when both of us were just totally floored by the unusual degree of sincerity these scouts had managed on stage. I instantly thought Langley Schools but better and less creepy, and I was glued, anxiously awaiting some inevitable Downs' boffo.

It never happened of course, and on closer look the trumpet player didn't have an overbite so much as he was really bad at shaving. I hate to make Sufjans out to be a case of "If you set your sights low enough, you'll never be disappointed", but I'll be honest and say that was the case for me.

The album is kinda long and what Mitchum would say is "samey", but I don't remember being that disarmed by such a simple, familiar sound, and I'm sorry that a lot of you haven't been able to have that same experience.

For the record, I'd give _Michigan_ 4.5 Arrows of Light out of 5.

Considering that my first job in newspapers was with the Spinal Column (albeit, delivering it) and a good majority of my friends went to West Bloomfield High, and I'm now aiming to move on to music criticism in bigger magazines, I'm realizing that I'm almost you.

When you've looked outside your bedroom window in the dead of winter and silently cursed the fact that you're eons removed from the beating pulse of the outside world that you're both pining for and afraid of, then the stark sweetness of the Michigan record deeply resonate. And since you don't have to be in the 313 (or 231, for that matter) to have those conflicts, I'm quite curious to see what state pops up next.

BTW, "L.A." stands for "Lansing Area" for the uninitiated.

Spatz bread rules.

i delivered the detroit news back when they had an afternoon edition and always felt bad for free press kids who had to deliver their papers before school.

And isn't this kinda like Jim O'Rourke, anyway?

I'm glad SOMEBODY felt bad for us! Me and my brothers had three subdivisions of West Bloomfield south of Orchard Lake between us, and we used to have get up at 4:30 am, which can REALLY suck during a snowstorm! (Good training for the Army, though, I guess...)

Also, if it's worth anything, I did finally go to the U.P. and Sleeping Bear Dunes and Petoskey and both Sault Sainte Maries for the first time two summers ago. They were nice. Sort of.

Not in the sense of having an agenda or a message, but I was impressed that he dealt with these topics at all (the first song is about Flint, and nicely covers the same ground as Roger & Me without Michael Moore's mugging). In another version of my blurb I namechecked John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, which is a far greater work but had some of the same themes of describing ordinary lives and mimicking the pace of industry or lack thereof to tell a deeply American story.

Mostly I'm impressed that Sufjan would make a - let's not say political, but cultural - statement at a time when so many musicians (outside maybe rap?) seem oblivious to the nation around them, a few immediate post-9/11 shockwaves aside. In fact, it's a bummer the music wasn't more ... I dunno ... original or varied or whatever, to keep up with the lyrics.

Thanks for saving me some time, chuck.

Did anybody hear about the trouble with the new Michigan Commemorative Quarter? Apparently they had to recall a bunch of them because the tape kept unwrapping the cluster holding one nickel and two dimes.

This might actually be ok if it was the original 13 states, though.
(Or the 13 that start with the letter "A," assuming that's how many start with the letter "A," or whatever.)

Well, having lived most of my life in Michigan "below the tree line" from Benton Harbor to Ann Arbor to Detroit, I'm not willing to accept the contention that I lack "Michigan" credibility. Detroit may not be the sum total that "Michigan" represents, but it's a pretty damn big part of it.

/asshole music snob

Still love this album. What the hell's he up to these days? His states project seems to have stagnated.

I will still rep for this album even though I don't think anything else he's done quite measures up

ok I can't really say that since there's a bunch of shit he did I haven't even bothered to listen to, got real tired of him years ago, but I'm revisiting Michigan and still like it

all good naysayers is such a great song, flint too, vito's ordination song...i prefer illinois, and both records are bloated (like the song titles), but yeah it's great, and i wonder where he's been the last four years..

apparently he put out a single this year called "A Little Lost" so that seems to answer your question

it is an arthur russell cover

oh and I guess it's actually on a comp about to come out: red hot + arthur russell

I should revisit this one over the winter (but not before)
I wonder if there's as much vibraphone as I remember