http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0-SKD2D6cBA
Coming in at a whopping two minutes, having only two distinct instruments and repeating itself without much variation, this is an exceedingly simple song. And yet, there’s the distinct feeling of a heartstring being tugged whenever I listen to it. Why? It’s hardly even a sketch of a song – almost a sketch of a sketch. So many of Sufjan’s songs are stories, fleshed out in varying degrees of detail, and I think of this song as the most fundamental level of that spectrum – a sentiment. One word comes to my mind with this song: plaintive. The title adds details that one can build off of in their own minds.
What happened in Redford? Who are Yia-Yia and Pappou? Nobody can certainly say what this song is about, perhaps not even Stevens. But with what little we’re given – the chords, the pace, the chorus of aaahhs – we can construct our own stories.
Showing posts with label sufjan stevens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sufjan stevens. Show all posts
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid) — Sufjan Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAJCUGD6FtM
2011, Spirit Day in high school; I have a new album (eight years old, but new to me) and, stuck in a window seat, too early in the morning, I begin to listen to it. It's a long trip, the bus is hot but the outside is horrid and dreary; I press my cheek up against the glass and let the temperature difference flow through me. Flint begins, and it sets in; we drive north through upstate New York, approaching Bear Mountain; my friends from the city, set against this weird landscape, familiar and repetitive but still novel every time. And the song is melancholy and beautiful and slow — and I fall asleep, waking up at the end of the album, when we arrive. I don't remember any of the songs, but on second listening, everything is strangely familiar, inherently false jamais vu.
2011, Spirit Day in high school; I have a new album (eight years old, but new to me) and, stuck in a window seat, too early in the morning, I begin to listen to it. It's a long trip, the bus is hot but the outside is horrid and dreary; I press my cheek up against the glass and let the temperature difference flow through me. Flint begins, and it sets in; we drive north through upstate New York, approaching Bear Mountain; my friends from the city, set against this weird landscape, familiar and repetitive but still novel every time. And the song is melancholy and beautiful and slow — and I fall asleep, waking up at the end of the album, when we arrive. I don't remember any of the songs, but on second listening, everything is strangely familiar, inherently false jamais vu.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The Mistress Witch from McClure (Or, the Mind That Knows Itself) — Sufjan Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCb9jxqQYME
This was the song that convinced me I could live in Illinois; that, even though it was far away from home, it would be okay. Even though it was rural and cold and windy and two hours from a city and I knew like three people in a 100 mile radius and I didn't know how to use the buses and the classes were all different and I was in college! And this song, with its first line casually mentioning Illinois, made it okay.
That's really scary. It was - is - an entirely irrational argument. I was convinced by the banjo and the happy horns and the harmonies that someone had recorded seven years prior that something about my life would work itself out.
The lyrics aren't even anthemic. He isn't speaking to the listener, saying 'everything will be alright', the way some songs do. He's speaking about his childhood, transplanted onto a miserable little town in Illinois, and I got comfort from that.
Thank god for Sufjan Stevens, but, still. If that's all it takes to soothe my fears — horns and strings and bells — that's really good. Or is it really bad?
A note — on the cover of The Avalanche, Sufjan Stevens (the cartoon) is wearing a University of Illinois t-shirt. So that's something.
This was the song that convinced me I could live in Illinois; that, even though it was far away from home, it would be okay. Even though it was rural and cold and windy and two hours from a city and I knew like three people in a 100 mile radius and I didn't know how to use the buses and the classes were all different and I was in college! And this song, with its first line casually mentioning Illinois, made it okay.
That's really scary. It was - is - an entirely irrational argument. I was convinced by the banjo and the happy horns and the harmonies that someone had recorded seven years prior that something about my life would work itself out.
The lyrics aren't even anthemic. He isn't speaking to the listener, saying 'everything will be alright', the way some songs do. He's speaking about his childhood, transplanted onto a miserable little town in Illinois, and I got comfort from that.
Thank god for Sufjan Stevens, but, still. If that's all it takes to soothe my fears — horns and strings and bells — that's really good. Or is it really bad?
A note — on the cover of The Avalanche, Sufjan Stevens (the cartoon) is wearing a University of Illinois t-shirt. So that's something.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Movement III: Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXBp9xlIos
The BQE is a modern classical album about an expressway in New York City, and that's ridiculous, except that it's also very, very good. The Brooklyn-Queens expressway itself is a gorgeous, surreal vista with views from the air of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Oddly enough, this isn't the first romanticization of civil engineering/architecture. Public works often capture the public imagination (think Statue of Liberty, Central Park, etc). An expressway is an unconventional one, but... well, it just works.
It's not Sufjan Stevens' usual fare whatsoever. He is a pop musician who dabbles in classical, electronic, folk. This is a full classical album (with accompanying visuals): entirely instrumental.
My strongest memory of The BQE is driving along it at 3 AM, I think — to get back to Illinois after winter break, I had a 4 AM flight out of JFK, and we drove. It was the middle of the night, and foggy, so only the lights of the city were visible, not the content itself. I had burned this album to CD, and we were listening to it, and it just... it sort of matched up. It matched up perfectly. The beginning matched up with East Harlem, and then the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge over Randalls Island, and so forth until Jamaica Bay. And the music swelled and faltered as the road did, breaking into electronics as we went under another, taller expressway; swelling as the AirTrain joined us from the left, and building to a—
And then a postlude. The plane taxied and burst into the sky, through the thick cloud and rain, and the night turned to day — the sun was already up, above the fog cover.
The BQE is a modern classical album about an expressway in New York City, and that's ridiculous, except that it's also very, very good. The Brooklyn-Queens expressway itself is a gorgeous, surreal vista with views from the air of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Oddly enough, this isn't the first romanticization of civil engineering/architecture. Public works often capture the public imagination (think Statue of Liberty, Central Park, etc). An expressway is an unconventional one, but... well, it just works.
It's not Sufjan Stevens' usual fare whatsoever. He is a pop musician who dabbles in classical, electronic, folk. This is a full classical album (with accompanying visuals): entirely instrumental.
My strongest memory of The BQE is driving along it at 3 AM, I think — to get back to Illinois after winter break, I had a 4 AM flight out of JFK, and we drove. It was the middle of the night, and foggy, so only the lights of the city were visible, not the content itself. I had burned this album to CD, and we were listening to it, and it just... it sort of matched up. It matched up perfectly. The beginning matched up with East Harlem, and then the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge over Randalls Island, and so forth until Jamaica Bay. And the music swelled and faltered as the road did, breaking into electronics as we went under another, taller expressway; swelling as the AirTrain joined us from the left, and building to a—
And then a postlude. The plane taxied and burst into the sky, through the thick cloud and rain, and the night turned to day — the sun was already up, above the fog cover.
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