A Case Against Sufjan Stephens by Stephen Thomas Erlewine (all music)

I couldn't agree more.

i know i spelled stevens wrong before someone jumps down my throat

Agreed in full.

"Deliberately limited appeal" is like a BAD thing, WTF?

Hey, I write for that database!

Exactly. If anything, this article made me want to give Sufjan Stevens' CDs another chance.

In other words Daddino OTM

I find the whole critical obsession over Sufjan to be waaayyy overdone, and I say that as someone who really loves bands like Stereolab and High Llamas. With Sufjan, I try to like his music, but I can't escape this feeling that he is just too nice, too plain, and too earnest. Where's the edge?

I'm very uncomfortable with the way he's been embraced by the NPR/Starbucks crowd. It's like he's created this music about big social issues and being the voice of the downtrodden or some such thing, and by listening to this music, it somehow makes you a better person. But let's face it, there is a disjunction between the subjects of the songs and the intended audience that makes the whole project rather unseemly. With that in mind, the "deliberately limited appeal" comment maybe makes more sense: he's using populist themes to make elitist music.

I like this line from today's review in Pitchfork.

This is inaccurate -- clever, but inacurrate.

Ned, however...

In terms of live annoyingness, the only thing I've heard that comes close is Xiu Xiu, and at least Jamie sometimes flips his shit and does ear damage for a few moments. Then again, alienation is part of what Xiu Xiu is-- Sufjan Stephens isn't trying, and that says something.

Ned, however...

I AM REVIEWBOT MY ARTICLE BACKLOG IS BIGGER THAN YOURS

Not entirely. As I muttered on another Sufjan thread, one time I walked into my fave local coffee place and asked what Stereolab B-side was playing. I was told it was Sufjan and nearly choked.

How much of this stuff is not because critics write about it, but because a lot of people just seem to have it?

The "deliberately" part seems terrifically wrong to me. I can't think of anything that's going on in Sufjan's music that seems calculated to limit his appeal; if anything, the music itself seems a bit unctuous, filled with exactly the sort of pleasantly complex folk moves that most people are kind of inherently okay with. A track like the Gacy song tracks back to most Americans' basic definition of what a song consists of, across pretty much the entire range of ages and genres. And lyrically, it's straightforward, traditionally "meaningful," earnest, etc. ("Charming" geek moves like the states project don't seem to actually infect the meaning of the songs much.) So I'm not sure what standard makes his appeal "deliberately" limited, unless all we're saying is that he's not the kind of musician who's aiming for the charts.

I mean, Erlewine seems to be saying the exact opposite here: the thing that limits the guy's appeal is that there's kind of nothing there, no big risky clump of personality that might draw people in. Calling that "deliberate" is weird: who here thinks that Sufjan's erased himself to this point of plain likeable competence in order to keep himself in a niche? That doesn't seem to be his intention at all.

His problem may actually be that he's just too much about the music, man -- this humble craftsman approach, this thing where he's interested in creating meaning rather than enacting it, gets him to a point where he's just kind of building something that can feel a bit impersonal. One of the things I've always liked about indie as a genre is that it often allows people to imagine and build something interesting, whether or not they can actually be that thing -- Sufjan feels like the problematic flip-side of that tendency, because what he's building isn't particularly imaginative. It's like he's putting a whole lot of skill into play-acting the role of a regular singer-songwriter, with just a few stylistic flourishes (the arrangements, the states) to make it supposedly "interesting."

I think this is right. I saw one of the Illinois shows, and thought he wasn't very enthusiastic about playing live (he even came out and apologized for their lack of energy near the end). But I read the play-acting with the indie role as part of a much more interesting struggle: that of someone trying to straddle two worlds in two different senses: a classical vs. pop straddling, and a Christian-secular straddling. The former is very common and we've remarked on it a lot elsewhere on ILM, but the latter isn't so much. Stevens seems (e.g. in the Pitchfork interview) to want to downplay the Christian-secular thing, and his motives for that are probably varied and interesting. But in the process, he's coming across as a bit bland personality-wise. But I know the culture he's coming out of (he's a Hope College grad), and that Christian-secular struggle is an enormous one. And with Stevens, here's a guy getting big NYC gigs with minimal token-Christian "affirmative action", as an indie guy. This struggle is really hard to write about without buying into too many presuppositions from within each culture, but Stevens seems to be trying to force us to. Take for instance "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades", a song on Illinois that's got striking similarities to the story of Jacob wrestling the angel in Genesis, but by no means "in your face" about it. Or take "John Wayne Gacy", a song from the Reformed perspective on humanity's inherent sinfulness and the redeeming power of grace. One interesting thing about what Stevens is doing is that he's singing these songs from a perspective, mediated by the "50 states" conceit; like he's wearing a mask. It just reinforces the "not in your face" thing, and it's interesting to wonder what him deciding to wear a mask tells us about "us" (instead of focusing on what it tells us about "him").

Of course if you find the music tedious or whatever, you won't want to listen. Fine. This is meant not to be an apologetic for liking his music as it is trying to give shape to what might be under the surface of a lot of the backlash I've read about Stevens and his act, if not yet fully articulated.

I think this is right. I saw one of the Illinois shows, and thought he wasn't very enthusiastic about playing live (he even came out and apologized for their lack of energy near the end). But I read the play-acting with the indie role as part of a much more interesting struggle: that of someone trying to straddle two worlds in two different senses: a classical vs. pop straddling, and a Christian-secular straddling. The former is very common and we've remarked on it a lot elsewhere on ILM, but the latter isn't so much. Stevens seems (e.g. in the Pitchfork interview) to want to downplay the Christian-secular thing, and his motives for that are probably varied and interesting. But in the process, he's coming across as a bit bland personality-wise. But I know the culture he's coming out of (he's a Hope College grad), and that Christian-secular struggle is an enormous one. And with Stevens, here's a guy getting big NYC gigs with minimal token-Christian "affirmative action", as an indie guy. This struggle is really hard to write about without buying into too many presuppositions from within each culture, but Stevens seems to be trying to force us to. Take for instance "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades", a song on Illinois that's eventually parallels the story of Jacob wrestling the angel in Genesis, but isn't "in your face" about it. Or take "John Wayne Gacy", a song from the Reformed perspective on humanity's inherent sinfulness and the redeeming power of grace. One interesting thing about what Stevens is doing is that he's singing these songs from a perspective, mediated by the "50 states" conceit. It's like he's wearing a mask. It's interesting to wonder what this mask-wearing tells us about "us" (instead of focusing on what it tells us about "him"), say, on the Christian-secular divide.

Of course if you find the music tedious or whatever, you won't want to listen. Fine. This is meant not to be an apologetic for liking his music as it is trying to say why I think the backlash against Stevens is really interesting.

Who should we be listening to at the moment?

Sufjan Stevens - and he's just astonishing. He's like some mad gay Christian American singer-songwriter who just writes the most amazing stuff.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to renew my strenuous objection to this song's essential narcissism, and also to player-hate on Sufjan a little, because he is getting crazy paid

I could list a lot of issues I have with Sufjan and the way he presents himself - that he's cagey about "what it all means," that he evokes national and cultural themes but doesn't always go all the way to say something about them, that the tour last year was silly (though the Lincoln Center show with orchestra was probably right on). I see why people react this way and that to his "fame." And Nitsuh's points are great, but I actually wish he would have less of a persona, or at least do far fewer of these self-depracating, "yeah, I dunno" interviews.

But at the end of the day? The guy has still written a bunch of really good songs.

And Sufjan's arrangements are really great.

That's part of what I meant about this being the end-point of a certain indie tendency -- and you can see the same thing operating with other acts serving this audience, like say the Decemberists. (Note that they also share a fixation on history and a tendency to dress up, though the Decemberists are staging storybooks while Sufjan's staging "America.") It comes down to the same differences we put between writers of fiction and musicians: we kind of expect musicians to perform their ideas, to be themselves, whereas its understood that writers don't have to be the thing, just arrange it on a page. Like I said, I always thought that was a terrific thing about indie, especially when it allows acts to imagine things people aren't likely to just naturally be.

But if we were to imagine Sufjan as a writer -- both in terms of lyrics and style -- he would still be a bit of a boring one; he'd just be like Myla Goldberg minus depth. So you can set that to the best arrangements in the universe, and the most competent and well-crafted songwriting, but for plenty of people it's going to feel like there's something missing. (I get the feeling Sufjan really wouldn't be so great of a writer of fiction, really, but with that we get back into my whole tag about "MFA rock." Meloy from Decemberists has an MFA, so I think we can all expect that in the next decade or so he'll have a novel to sell -- and just enough audience and notoriety to sell it pretty effectively.)

...
Anyway, I'm just being facetious. He's pretty OTM on this.

Which is a great quote, even if I disagree with its relevence to Sufjan. Because so much of the culture we (I) participate in is observatory, if the above quote is condemnation - so much becomes condemned. It is either a fault in the listener, who is engaging in a world (here: American 3rd world) in which he doesn't belong. Or it is the fault of the performer (here: Sufjan Stevens) who doesn't belong there as well, but leads us to believe he has authenticity. (The distinction of course being: a listener from the 3rd world who listens to Sufjan, or me listening to Bob Marley.)

I still don't think it applies here. I'm not going to reread all the lyrics to Illinoise, but I remember them as being basically middle-class America.

Also, "he'd just be like Myla Goldberg minus depth":
Do you mean Bea Season Myla? (Cute, overreaching, sometimes moving, sometimes tedious.) Or Wicket's Remedy Myla? (Historically boring, irrelevant, tedious). I feel like the second, like the allmusic review, is what makes his work so different from Oberst: You just don't care.

Which would make him -- holy shit -- the Garisson Keillor of the indie-rock set?

That seems like a pretty strong assessment (and might be misleading; IIRC Stevens wasn't raised as a Christian, but I could be wrong). If you replace it with

"a person who grew up in the Midwest and feels a strong conviction to a particular breed of Protestantism"

then you might be more on the money. But as to his audience I think you're right on the money. As far as calling his audience back to the Midwest and back to the type of Christianity he envisions: if you're right, then isn't he doing what you said above you liked about indie: that it's a place to imagine and build something interesting? Unless your view is that nothing Midwestern or Christian could ever be interesting, which I take it is a pretty common view.

just curious

But mainly why I like him is because Michigan sounds like Central New York, which I meant to write a whole thing about sometime.

I didn't like Illinois that much, but maybe he'll get me back on the next one.

Agreed. That's certainly one of the things that I find fascinating about Stevens and Meloy.

Not really: he doesn't need to "imagine" or "built" midwestern Protestantism. When I say I like that about indie, I'm thinking more of acts that seemed to imagine something that didn't so much exist.

i read this really really wrong the first time i glanced at it.

(and it's not like i don't like the kind of music i hear that he plays.)

(fwiw, i still prefer meloy cause he has a sense of humor and sufjan apparently doesn't).

That bit was pretty dumb. People think Sufjan's arrangements are sophisticated because they are. I guess "brass/winds = sophisticated" might be the thought process of some folks, but I'm not convinced that that's really a common view.

or listened to, either.

Wait, I thought that gansta rap was for "a pain-free intro into the US underclass." I'm so confused now!

Will Puerto Rico get an album? I'd LIKE to hear that.

Holden Caulfield would hate Sufjan, he does feel like a phony, though my ears are non-american. I'll take Van Dyke Parks anyday.

I like that idea, you should call an intervention.. everyone can sit down and relate how they feel, recommend some help to the poor misguided boy.

i find that to be completely off the mark. seven swans contains some of the most astonishingly effective songwriting i've heard in years. it is powerful in it's simplicity and sincerity. and the avalanche is a collection of outtakes and songs that didn't make the illinois cut - of course it's cluttered. but empty and without anything to say? that statement begs a relistening, as i find "casimir pulaski day", or "all the trees of the field will clap their hands", or even the short but breathtaking "concerning the ufo sighting..." that kicks off illinois to all be rife with imagery, thoughtfulness and quiet beauty. and his arrangements ARE sophisticated - 5/8 time and 15+ instrument parts aren't something someone who's listened to smile a few times and played in HS band could just pull off.

but i have little patience for "a case against" articles in music crit anyway. unless there's a genuine reason, like an artist takes a political or social stance that can be analyzed, or has done things in her or her personal life that seeps into their music and thus begs questioning, i don't really see the point. does anyone listen to sufjan so they can empathize with the working class without actually helping them? hardly. one would not say such a thing about springsteen's "nebraska", or for a more contemporary example, the hold steady's "separation sunday". hell, what about white people listening to hip hop? the whole argument is lame and unfounded. besides, half of sufjan's songs, at least on illinois, are about american history and the disconnect between the past and the present.

You can also probably guess that he was probably the very type of hipster that fell for these type of collegiate indie-rock gimmicks at some point (It's even alluded to in the first sentence) and so he writes with the authority of somebody who knows exactly how and why these things get popular and why some or all of it is nonsense. It also doesn't hurt that he knows his pop/rock history well enough to see the individual influences these guys take from and so he isn't fooled in the way NPR and undergraduate culture usually is.

Basically Sufjan Stevens reminds me of the guy that plays the sensitive card to pick up girls. It's a gambit that really rubs me the wrong way.

Even in his heart the Devil has to know the water level
Are you writing from the heart?
Are you writing from the heart?

I feel that I would have embraced "Illinois" more had I not known his intentions of writing about the 50 states, even more if his lyrics were different. No where is this more apparent to me than on the track "John Wayne Gacy Jr.". GAH this song irks me like NO OTHER. In fact, I was loving his stuff until I got to this song, and it epitomizes everything that I don't appreciate about Sufjan. The song is great up until the line "And in my best behavior I am really just like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid." Excuse me? How about no. His attempt at pseudo-moral-philosophy fell really flat with me, just because his example is so ludicrous. "Oh look, John Wayne Gacy Jr. raped and murdered dozens of innocent boys, but hey everyone, guess what? We are all human and can relate to him and thusly are all capable of (or have even done) the same evil". In fact, that should have been the title of his track, to keep in sync with the other equally ridiculous titles.

I liked him at Michigan, but now I'm a bitch like everyone else because Illinois was more widely recognized. It took no balls to write that when he did.

Again- shots at the NPR/Starbucks crowd- feel a bit cooler now that the Kallikak Family wasn't playing while you got your latte?

for one thing, 5/8 is easy as hell to play over -- improvising is another thing, but if you've got some level of basic competence, just playing the charts should be a breeze. try figuring out radiohead's "pyramid song" if you want challenging time signatures in pop, never mind jazz or classical. as for the instruments, i haven't listened that closely but if you play one instrument in a family, it's not that hard to learn the others, particularly if you're only playing basic stuff (eg. if you play alto sax, sopranino and recorder aren't much of a leap). he's not a high school band chancer, but then, he's been a professional musician for a while now, and deserves to be held to a high standard if you're going to praise him for his musicianship.

what i recall from listening to Illinoise a couple times is that his arrangements aren't very complicated - lots of unison lines, simple chord progressions etc. not much to sink your teeth into, and pretty bland/samey to boot. SMILE at least had a lot of great close harmony writing, motific development, and orchestration. i'm kind of talking out of my ass without really listening harder to Illinoise though -- someone feel free to school me.

Columbia!

It sounds like he reads The Baffler

If so you should love Sufjan as he has never fucked with the formula.

understood what he was getting at? more than I can say for you, and you're the one writing a god damn essay. a crap start to a crap essay. just say "at first I thought he was so-so, and now I've grown tired," and save yourself 300 crap words. fucking critics can be insufferable. I have enjoyed the guy's reviews in the past, but... shit.

I want to say I'm not a big Sufjan fan. I do like a few songs, like Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie, for example, very lovely.

no it isn't, it's a constantly shifting group of sets of 3s and 2s. the piano is following the other instruments.

The song is infamous among fans for its time signature, which many find hard to discern or even nonexistent. However, "Pyramid Song" is actually based around an uncommon subdivision of 8/8 time (3+3+2) in which the eighth notes are swung. This could also be expressed as 16/8 time subdivided as 3+3+4+3+3.

now I actually want to hear "Pyramid Song"

the band i was in in college (warning shit-dumb undergrads etc), all trained jazz musicians, covered it and couldn't figure it out at the time. although i still think the fact that none of us got it kind of proves my larger point about "Pyramid Song" being complex, certainly compared to Sufjan.

thanks a fucking lot, internet

That's the subject for a whole thread right there.

Surfin' Stevens would just be one of the first nominees...

carry on talking about your boring singer-songwriter and boring music critic.

Totally! I'm gonna go cue me up some "Clocks."

That O'Riley fellow says this is true, as does the principal cellist for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

this seems about right, although he seems happy to repeat unconfirmed conventional wisdom concerning discographical info as much as critical opinion.

http://www.overspun.com/images/oreillymad.jpg

Haven't read much criticism, have you?

Haven't read much criticism, have you?

Alfred, most good criticism is or ought to be about much more than that. Not that I look to Allmusic for the latest cutting edge thought, any more than I look to Readers Digest for scholarly research.

it is worth talking about how and why this review misses its mark, though. i agree x1000 that "music created for a limited audience is no good" is a fatal thesis - i mean - that instantly locks you into only allowing yourself to like whatever makes the charts, and this reviewer clearly is interested in more than just that, otherwise he wouldn't be listening to sufjan stevens.

this, also, struck a wrong chord: the songs "all bear strikingly similar arrangements"

i mean, so does every song on "band of gypsies"!

:-(

Anyone using it can wank my Grandpa.

i mean, so does every song on "band of gypsies"!

Ha, indeed.

Man, As You Like It is gonna be pretty confusing by the time you're done.

SOME, UMM ... THIS DUDE
No, by mine honour, but I was bid to come for you.

ROSALIND
Where learned you that oath, fool?

THIS, YOU KNOW, GUY
Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they
were good pancakes and swore by his honour the
mustard was naught: now I'll stand to it, the
pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and
yet was not the knight forsworn.

CELIA
How prove you that, in the great heap of your
knowledge?

ROSALIND
Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.

JUST THIS DUDE I KNOW, OKAY? CHILL OUT
Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and
swear by your beards that I am a knave.

CELIA
By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

GET OFF MY BACK, HO
By my knavery, if I had it, then I were; but if you
swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no
more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he
never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away
before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.

i read this really really wrong the first time i glanced at it.

fucking roffle. nice mental image with that, too.

Totally! I'm gonna go cue me up some "Clocks."

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), July 12th, 2006.

Eerie - Clocks came on the radio on the coffeeshop I'm in just as I read that.

there's complex (or "sophisticated") and there's complicated. sufjan stevens' arrangments are complicated as all heck, and certainly impressive as such, but not complex by any stretch (i don't mean that as a criticism; like most/all rush songs, i assume that's the point)

it's like what andre previn said about ellington: "stan kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and brass and make a dramatic gesture and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, 'oh yes, that's done like this.' but duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don’t know what it is."

http://www.thereminvox.com/ezimagecatalogue/catalogue/phpG0D9vC.jpg

ok thnx

not strictly but that's how most people would differentiate them.

i dunno, i think it's helpful as well as being pretty clear.

(did philosophy, edited a magazine, is unsufferably anal about this stuff)

Sorry, I wasn't coming in on what Uri said. You were right with your explanation in the context. I'm just talking my ass off.

Anyway, I think most musicians would interpret a "complex" arrangement as being one that called for many instruments and included many different parts at any given time, and/or had highly specific, nuanced performance instructions, unconventional notations, extended techniques, etc. Again, I think if we compare Stevens to his popular music peers, I think he's pretty damn good on the orchestration front. Not as good as Brian Wilson, but perhaps worth mentioning in the same sentence.

obviously i cannot put forth a cohrertn argument right now so this is just a reminder to my sober self to STICK UP FOR WHAT YOU BELIVE IN GODAMMIT this shit is GOOD

Rush is a really good comparison. they write OK riffs, but then they go and ruin them by putting them in weird time signatures that actually make the riffs less interesting and/or fun. Stan Kenton too, since his bland songs were made to seem more bland by having a Big Loud Fucking Band (whereas Duke's music was enhanced by the judicious use of a Big Loud Fucking Band.) Sufjan totally falls victim to this -- the time signatures, instruments and all that crap are essentially blinding people to the fact that he couldn't write an interesting song to save his life. oh, and i hear you bristling at what may seem like a plea for a Return To Punk Simplicity, but that's not what i'm saying at all. Brian Wilson, Duke Ellington, these people deserve the title of genius because they understood songcraft (not just melody-writing either, which is part but not all of the skill), arranging, and how the two feed off of each other. Sufjan just doesn't have the tunes, and his stuff sounds impossibly rococo and overblown as a result.

i'm a bit tipsy meself, and i must concur: i often feel that sufjan is america's greatest living songwriter, especially on my morning drive to work post coffee pre walking into the office with the early morning fuck it all blues. complex vs. sophisticated? a worthy argument, no doubt, but truly i feel that even if it's not groundbreaking and brilliant in the duke ellington/brian wilson way that has been brought up, the segue from whatever time signature the first part of "come on feel the illinoise" is in to the second part of the song gets me every damned time.

Sufjan totally falls victim to this -- the time signatures, instruments and all that crap are essentially blinding people to the fact that he couldn't write an interesting song to save his life.

no way! listen to anything off seven swans, or to my beloved casimir pulaski day, and dare to claim that that's not stripped down, simple and heartfelt. it's not all small orchestra, highly arranged stuff. call me a sufjan apologist, i cannot deny that i love everything he's ever done!

I am revolted not so much by the claim as by the concept of anywhere's 'greatest living songwriter,' at least as applied to a pretty damned standard and therefore not all that revelatory approach to 'songwriting.' You never hear, say, Timbaland talked about in those terms but on approximately 3434354 different levels I'd give him that appellation much more readily, and he's only one potential candidate.

However, thank you all for making me realize what exactly Sufjan is -- he's this year's Stephin Merritt, and I detest him for almost the exact same reasons.

well, you're right in the "anywhere's greatest living songwriter" sense, and upon second thinking (forgive my alcohol fueled internet ramblings) i see your point and revise my statement. i'm going on gut instinct/completely subjective viewpoint here, in that i've known and loved his works for years.

But even if you insist on restricting the definition of "songwriting" to being the rotting carcass of Dylan/Cohen/Mitchell-style songwriting, I think Dave Berman and Will Oldham are both ten times better than Stevens (and at least they're actually funny!)

I live in America
With a pair of Payless shoes
The upper penisula
And the television news
And I've seen my wife
At the K-Mart
In strange ideas
We live apart

I live in a trailer home
With a snow mobile, my car
The window is broken out
And the interstate is far
I drove all night
To find my child
In strange ideas
He's been revived

In strange ideas
In stranger times
I've no idea
What's right sometimes
I lost my mind
I lost my life
I lost my job
I lost my wife

It's that same flat, forced sadness that I hear in almost every one of his songs.

For real.

about that MBV record........

dude, chill the fuck out

No dice. I've always been clear about its importance for me not being something I require or expect anyone else to feel the same about.

read your comment again

I did, and hooray!

The Subculture That Ate the Discourse

OTM. I think I've heard a couple of his Xmas songs and that's about it.

Ned you may be shocked and/or awed to learn that that claim was inspired largely by his electronic album. Not that it was all that great, in retrospect, but to my sixteen-year-old self, the fact that a single man could do solemn acoustic folk, bombastic broadway musical, and 'weird' IDM shit was clearly the evidence of a singular talent. I felt like I was staring into the abyss of a vast and largely unrealized musical genius. What would he do next? Speculation was eager and optimistic; Oregon, my friends and I decided, would be the 'experimental' album, while New York would probably get a bunch of twangy country songs about the Adirondacks and the Finger Lakes (then, when enough people were confused and outraged, Sufjan would admit that he had played the whole thing for laughs, and release a separate album entirely about NYC). We most looked forward to California, which, we were certain, would feature Sufjan in full-on punk-rocker mode.

Then Illinois came out (I'm skipping over Seven Swans here; it probably should've been the first sign of trouble, but I just wrote it off as something he "had to get out of his system"), and it felt like looking at Michigan in a funhouse mirror that magically transformed charming sincerity into cloying sentimentality, reduced earnest ambitions to laughable conceits, and made everything 15 minutes longer and 200% more boring. And somehow, in spite of the fact that I've listened to the album all the way through maybe three times, I will rip the throat of anyone who suggests the world would be a better place without it.

I am going to stop now, because this is getting kind of weird; and because it is only 9:45, and I am on then verge of a tirade which will leave me feeling drained for the rest of the day.

ps:
i am not teriffically surprised that people who like this record are also the kind of people who have pep-talks with themselves while posting on message boards.
-- yuengling participle (pton_mwaa...), July 13th, 2006.

fuck this guy. music in being-enjoyed-by-people-with-emotions shocker

The lyrics that Abbadavid quotes are exactly what bugs me about Stevens. It's like he's trying to show sympathy/solidarity with the narrator in his song, but it comes off as a stereotypical parody. Although a person who may fit the profile of the narrator could end up listening to Sufjan Stevens, they are not the target demographic to whom his record label is marketing his music. I may be wrong, but I don't believe they sell Sufjan Stevens albums at K-Mart.

Bruce Springsteen was mentioned as a comparison above. I think that the kind of characters described on say Born To Run, could easily be imagined as the kind of people who would enjoy listening to Born To Run.

I think I've spotted the problem here.

I felt like I was staring into the abyss of a vast and largely unrealized musical genius.

About your metaphor...

music in being-enjoyed-by-people-with-emotions shocker

I've heard of these people without emotions. There are a couple around, right?

I'm not terribly surprised that people who like this album would feel drained all day from posting on a message board.

Then why get all OTT when others make extravagant claims about rcords that leave you cold? I mean, that's perfectly "within your rights", but your reaction seems to be just the other side of the same coin. Life's too short blah blah blah and all that.........

I'll let you know that once I've crawled out of the deep, dark abyss of Sufjan's talent.

i mean, so does every song on "band of gypsies"!"

Yeah, live albums tend to.

OTMs above to the Stephen Merritt and Air Supply points.

scott just sonned me. ned tried to but misses that I wasn't accusing anyone of being an emotionless robot, just pointing out that it's kind of ridiculous to use some random internet douchebag's (read: "my") bad day histrionics as a signifier for any larger tendencies among sufjanites. we're all people here; even krautrock fans get the blues.

Sufjan Stevens, on the other hand, makes music that calls attention to the arrangements, so they are absolutely worth commenting on for good or for ill.

And for those that have brought up Stereolab comparisons:
I think there is a strong similarity between Michigan tracks like "All Good Naysayers" and "Detroit" and Cobra and Phases era Stereolab tracks like "The Free Design" and "Blips Drips and Strips."
Of course the Stereolab tracks are better....

Would you not agree that anything by the Free Design is better that "The Free Design" by Stereolab?

http://membres.lycos.fr/nounourshd/hpbimg/morris_albert-feelings_s.jpg

i watched the first twenty minutes of the Rush DVD, which was exactly like i described. then again, they didn't play "Roll The Bones"...?

Because I'm a rabid Stereolab fan!

And no I don't agree that anything by The Free Design is better than the song "The Free Design."

R30 is excellent, and they play Roll The Bones (not exactly my favorite Rush track...)

i dunno, i dealt w/my problem w/sufjan by uh selling the cd someone gave me as a gift.

seems like detestation is a bit...extreme of an emotion to have toward a performer it's easy enough to ignore. but whatever, it's your blood pressure, not mine.

However, thank you all for making me realize what exactly Sufjan is -- he's this year's Stephin Merritt, and I detest him for almost the exact same reasons.

I was interpreting them as:

complicated - difficult to play, requires proficiency with the instrument
complex - difficult to envision, though not difficult to play, necessarily

Complicated refers to the performer.
Complex refers to the composer.

complicated - complex for complexity's sake, unnecessarily complex, show-offy
complex - artfully complex, complex but worthwhile

I think either term could refer to performer or composer, but "complicated" is imprecise and too close in meaning to "complex."

I don't get this at all. Illinois sounds great on my Grados, with all of the layers sounding crisp and full.

And again, complex and complicated are pretty much synonymous. I'll grant that there is some difference in nuance, though. Dictionary.com provides this in the usage note for complex:

Synonyms: complex, complicated, intricate, involved, tangled, knotty

These adjectives mean having parts so interconnected as to make the whole perplexing. Complex implies a combination of many associated parts: The composer transformed a simple folk tune into a complex set of variations. Complicated stresses elaborate relationship of parts: The party's complicated platform confused many voters.

But still, they're synonyms. And I don't think complicated has any kind of connotation like "unnecessarily complex" or "show-offy."

yeah, that's not too far off. the stan kenton/duke ellington example illustrates what i was going for. this is obviously pretty freakin' subjective, but i don't hear much beneath the surface complexities of kenton's work (talking loud and sayin' nothin', as it were), whereas duke's work, however "simple" on the surface, strikes me as unendingly complex.

yeah, probably an oversimplification, i know.

-- Camiel (Camielinjapa...), July 13th, 2006.

Put the Dutch Sufjan thread through babelfish, it's worth it.

Anyway, to me it seems like there's a difference between the complicated and complex, but maybe they're just synonyms. In that case, I would say Sufjan's work is multi-layered with complex arrangements of simple lines using various instruments to create a total sound that is much greater than the sum of its parts, especially if listened to with a decent set of headphones.

And, by the way, how did that guy know I was Uri? Clearly it says "Bobby Ganush" right there.

It makes no sense to wonder why every Nirvana song is guitars, bass, and drums without even a hint of a snappy saxophone and trumpet counterpoint - that's just not what they're music is about.

Sufjan Stevens, on the other hand, makes music that calls attention to the arrangements, so they are absolutely worth commenting on for good or for ill.

I don't see how Sufjan's music intrinsically "calls attention to the arrangements." I think that's all a matter of perception based on what the listener is used to hearing. If you listen to a lot of music with strings, winds, and brass, you wouldn't think there's any particular attention-calling in his arrangements.

And I don't think rock bands get a free pass for not deviating from standard rock instrumentation. Every instrument on (or not on) a studio album represents a choice. I do tend to get bored by an entire album of the same guitar, bass, and drums.

Sufjan Stephens is a twerp

MBV are Godz who will accidently smite him one day when they sneeze

End of story

Yeah, these rock bands need to be held accountable for rocking out with their bitchin' guitar solos! Fuck that shit! I'll take me some twee oboe over a good guitar-drums-bass group any day!

-- Martijn for the its (martij...), July 13th, 2006.

Yeah, but where do you see my login name? Help me out here, I'm trying to be tricky!

Not to over-dignify your stupid post, but: It's not about the particular instruments, it's about variety and contrast. There's nothing inherently twee about an oboe, and there's nothing inherently rock about a guitar. All musicians/producers should be "held accountable" for their arrangements because they made them. I don't see any reason to be uncritical of bands using a standard rock ensemble and hyper-critical of anyone who does something different.

"I'll take 'Phrases I Never Thought I'd See' for $800, Alex."

okay I'm really only talking about They Also Mourn as it's the only song of his I ever listen to anymore. because of the vibraphones. and the backing vocals.

With Sufjan Stevens, you have a very different situation where he is obviously putting a lot of energy into the instrumentation of his songs, for good or for ill, and his music (at least on Michigan) is mixed in such a way that the multitude of instruments is right up front. Therefore, the choices he makes regarding arrangements is more central to his music than it would be for a typical rock band.

Also note that on many albums with songs featuring "arrangements" there is often separate credit given for the songwriter and for the arranger. Sufjan Stevens seems to take on both roles, so it makes sense to query his talent as an arranger as well as his talent as a songwriter and performer.

With Sufjan Stevens, you have a very different situation where he is obviously putting a lot of energy into the instrumentation of his songs

Maybe this is true in YOUR world...

your stupid post

Steve Goldberg, the thing is, I know from your website/myspace, and from various posts you've made on various threads, that you do *not* in fact listen to "rockin" music

-- Marmot 4-Tay: based on my memories of the one listen I gave it 19 years ago (marmotwolo...), July 13th, 2006.

Interesting! I don't see that on my screen. I guess I will have to try much harder!
Anywhooay, I answered your question about Buttholes.

But they do create arrangements. The fact that they use the same one all the time shouldn't give them a free pass. I understand where you're coming from and I think that it might be a common thought process, but I think it's totally wrong.

They don't typically come up with an idea for a song and then say "You know what might sound nice in this tune, a dab of power chords on a distorted guitar, and then maybe we could dapple in some thumping bass, and cap it off with a tippling of thunderous drums."

Why do you assume they don't say that? You think rock bands just play the first things that come into their heads with no thought given to breakdowns, buildups, etc? I think that's clearly false.

And no, there's nothing inherently twee about an oboe. It's just an instrument, and it can sound like many different things depending on the composer/arranger. I don't know how to phrase that any more unambiguously.

CDDB, you don't know me, and if you can't make an argument about the subject at hand without bringing my personality into it, I don't think that speaks to the strength of your position.

there's nothing inherently twee about an oboe.
there's nothing inherently twee about an oboe.
there's nothing inherently twee about an oboe.

But perhaps in your hands, the oboe will become twee!

Likewise, with Sufjan Stevens, I don't think it is fair to say that his music is boring because a lot of the songs use complex arrangements or because the instrumentations from one song to the next is similar or whatever. Does he do these arrangements for a reason or just because he has a lot of instruments lying around and tracks to fill up? Are the arrangements good? Well played? Original?

To me, the instrumentation he uses is decent enough. It reminds me of Brian Wilson, Stereolab, High Llamas, but his doesn't really excite me as much any of their work. It's a nice blend of instruments, but not very compelling or original. A lot of effort for minimal return.

I have much greater qualms with his songwriting and singing than with his arrangements.

Yeah that was a quote from someone else, so I'm assuming it's directed at them. We're in agreement that it's definitely false.

Yes, they give consideration to the structure of the song, but that is not arrangement, that is songwriting. Arrangement is specifically concerned with instrumentation. My experience with rock bands (and that includes playing in many rock bands) is that they don't tend to wonder on each and every song whether they should use the same old guitars, bass, and drums again. They play the instruments they know.

That isn't to deny the existence of rock bands with more adventurous arrangements, but the addition of other instruments doesn't necessarily signify the addition of value to the music. Nor does the lack of extra instruments necessarily take away from the value of the music. It can only be determined on a case-by-case basis.

I don't see how Sufjan's music intrinsically "calls attention to the arrangements." I think that's all a matter of perception based on what the listener is used to hearing. If you listen to a lot of music with strings, winds, and brass, you wouldn't think there's any particular attention-calling in his arrangements.

1. Many of his songs have lots of instruments mixed right up front rather than floating ethereally behind big guitars, bass, and drums. That signals to me that the arrangement is a central part of the song rather than an extra added texture or icing on the cake.

2. This is not a matter of perception, it is an aural fact: there are a lot of instruments that are non-traditional in a rock setting and they are high in the mix.

3. When I heard all these instruments I did not think "Tarnation! What are all them sound gee gaws and thingamabobs? Rock guitars don't sound like that where I come from!" Strings, Brass, and Woodwinds are not some outlandish foreign concept to me. In fact, you may even say that his use of these instruments is no more original or strange sounding than a rock band that only ever uses guitar, bass, and drums.

4. If you'd read the thread, you may have learned that I am an obsessive fan of Stereolab, a band that is not shy about using very prominent arrangements much like the ones in Sufjan Stevens songs, only better.

Well, I guess they don't call him Sufjan "ROCK N ROLL MOTHERFUCKER" Stevens for nothin'

That's not what I said. Bands can certainly be interesting with guitar, bass, and drums, if they use them well. But I think 10 songs with only 3 instruments tends to get boring no matter what those instruments are.

Yes, they give consideration to the structure of the song, but that is not arrangement, that is songwriting. Arrangement is specifically concerned with instrumentation.

Matt, you're simply wrong in your contention that rock bands don't arrange their songs. Even if the band gives no thought to what instruments they're using on a given song, they're arranging as soon as they decide how those instruments are going to be used. Is the guitar strummed? Is it played in open position, or high on the neck? Is there a second guitar part doing some picking? That's all arrangement. Songwriting pretty much = melody, harmony, lyrics.

In fact, you may even say that his use of these instruments is no more original or strange sounding than a rock band that only ever uses guitar, bass, and drums.

Yes, I would indeed say that. So why should he be judged differently from a rock band?

OTM.

Also: "All Good Naysayers..." from Michigan sort of resembles "Blips Drips and Strips" from Cobra and Phases Group....
-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), February 6th, 2006 1:26 AM. (jaymc) (link)

But I think 10 songs with only 3 instruments tends to get boring no matter what those instruments are.

But I think 10 songs with only 3 instruments tends to get boring no matter what those instruments are.

But I think 10 songs with only 3 instruments tends to get boring no matter what those instruments are.

But I think 10 songs with only 3 instruments tends to get boring no matter what those instruments are.

But I think 10 songs with only 3 instruments tends to get boring no matter what those instruments are.

*actually does like the piece*

Maybe sufjan will write symphony for 100 oboes and 100 plucked violins called Old Fridges in Parking Lots Make Me Melancholic.

Sufjan is the Woody Allen of contemporary musc.

That's all.

-- M@tt He1geson, Rendolent Ding-Dong (matt@game

Where is Geir? This thread certainly could do with some hongroscopy.

I stick my wiener in a socket
it doesn't matter if you're Davey Crocket
I got a dick that's burnt to a crisp
Do you remember that cereal "Quisp?"
It was an alien, propeller-headed motherfucker
on a cereal box
It wasn't Frankenberry or Flintstones,
but it was all I gots
Fuck my mom was a cheap bitch!

I just laughed so hard for so long at that little piece of, um, poetry and its accompanying GIF image that I almost puked (really!). Now my cheeks are all sore. Thanks for the early morning roffle, duder.

Hey, hey, pitcher, better check that batter
make sure the candy's in the Original Wrapper
hey, pitcher, better check that batter
make sure the candy's in the Original Wrapper, hey, hey, hey

WAHT

...Without ever really justifying the "I don't like it" at all.

Of course, the problem is that taste is subjective and fundamentally unjustifiable. We like what we like. And everything that STE objects to another listener might enjoy.

I'll say now that I like "Come On Feel the Illinoise." I recognize that it's hermetic, self-satisfied and almost oppressively cutesy-pie. I recognize that it isn't particularly sophisticated for all it's signifiers of sophistication. I recognize the high-school report quality of the whole thing -- musically as well as lyrically.

But that's a big part of why I like it. I agree with SJE all the way through, but I happen to enjoy the things he hates. And none of it takes anything away from the record itself.

Okay then...

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=61::68AP

It's like he stopped listening to mainstream rock in the late '90s and is still angry about it.

Then again, maybe I'm just a dourist who can't feel the "riotous call for free living no matter the consequences of the next day."

Long live rock.

But I realize that while gloom-n-doom styles have been ascendent since the grunge era, the pendulum is already starting to swing the other way. Jurek's piece is bemoaning the "death" of something that's actually experiencing a rebirth. Kids are gravitating towards the fun-fun party-party rawk. See The Darkness, Towers of London, Avenged Sevenfold, etc. Hell, that's what the whole retro-pop-punk thing was all about, anyway. And that's been going on for a decade, even losing steam at this point.

Shit, and while Jurek includes Prince and Michael Jackson in his summary of 80s hedonism, he reduces the total spectrum of 90s music to certain rock styles. What about hip-hop, teenpop and R&B? While Korn may have been gloomy as hell, Ludacris and *NSYNC sure weren't.

Plus it's so stodgy and curmudgeonly. Bleah.

I don't really see why he should be talking about Ludacris and *NSYNC any more than I would expect an article on the Second Viennese School to talk about Jimmie Lunceford or the Four Freshmen.

And he bemoans the gloomy pall that grunge and post-grunge rock cast (or reflected). But that ain't the only rock out there. Pop-punk went strong for quite a while, and gloom rock seems to be in decline -- debatably. Hedonistic pop-metal and hard rock styles certainly seem more popular over the last half-decade than in, say, the mid 90s. Don't see how the failure of the 2nd Darkness album really diminishes this.

The early century isn't as innocent or exuberant as the 80s. Given. But it isn't all piss and moan, either. It's kinda divided. Heart-wrenching indie-emo splits the bill with often upbeat dance rock and indie hip-hop. Gangsta rap settles into middle aged, nearly-blissful bougification. And grunge and nu-metal sag from the spotlight to be replaced by, what? Dunno, but it seems like less miserable forms are seeping in from all sides.

soooo. i think i've figured out why i don't like to listen to him. i feel it's fake. like there are all these sounds, motifs, directions -- but none of them are really committed. a tinge of this mood, that instrument -- for a product that's completely quirky and unique, but that doesn't really identify with any of its quirky elements.

it feels like when i cook, and i have no idea how to cook, so i throw 40 spices in one pot.

sufjan stevens is like "40 spices hummus." not right.

There's nothing inherently twee about 40 spices hummus.

dude that 40 spices hummus is fucking GOOOD tho.

I hate sufjan stevens fwiw.

haha i know, it's better than him