I dug a little deeper into Sufjan Stevens after yesterday's post on him. There is a phantastic story line on his beginnings he tells on his website:

The date and the place probably are true but the Mosaic tale with the milk crate must be a joke. Apparently his father from Lithuania and his mother from Greece split long ago. His first name is supposed to have been chosen by the leader of an islamic sect his parents were members of. Very mystifyingly dylanesque all this. Made up or not it really does not matter. Just listen to his music which does not need to be backed up by any mythical stories.

In 2000 he released his first album A Sun Came. It fuses indie rock songwriting with oriental sounds. My first pick from this album is A Winner Needs a Wand, a dynamic and sappy rock ballad bearing already most of Stevens' trademarks like his hushed voice, his love for infectious melodies and his musical adventurousness. The other song I found on the web from Stevens' debut was Demetrius. The title is already hinting into the direction that Stevens is very much into Christian religion and its history. Based on a nasty bass riff spiced up with another bass and a noisy guitar it nevertheless is a measured slow song which does not gain speed. Like Sonic Youth on sleeping pills cruising on the highway with the hand brake on. At the end the oriental reeds and the arabic singing woman make us wake up somewhere in a middle eastern souk.

2001's Enjoy Your Rabbit was a totally different affair. A purely instrumental concept album on the twelve Chinese zodiac signs touching on electronical avant-garde. It is interesting what Stevens says about electronic music in this interview:

There he summarised exactly what I think of most electronic music too. From this album I chose Year of the Dog which starts with electronic cats meowing and a superb mellow and warm xylophone melody. Then come muted humming vocals with a lot of reverb which go on for most of the song. The electronics which come with this are perfectly embedded in the organic setting. After half of the track though we have a change towards more experimental electronic sounds. Rather discomforting with some glitchy moments at the end.

On his 28th birthday last year Stevens' label Asthmatic Kitty released his third album, Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State (click on the places and you'll hear the sound clips and see some info on the places in the box on the left) which is probably his masterpiece up to now. It is another concept album. This time on his home state which is supposed to be followed by 49 releases on all the United States. I already wrote yesterday on Holland which still is my favourite of the songs I have heard of Stevens. The second song from Michigan I selected is Romulus. A very poetic folk-rock song dominated by the banjo on the not always easy relations you have with your parents.

The latest album has just come out two weeks ago. Seven Swans was recorded before Michigan and resulted from the same sessions. It was produced by Daniel Smith, head of the weird and funny Christian band Danielson Family and is rich in biblical images and generally more introspective. As Radiohead's Amnesiac it definitely is not a compilation of b-sides after what I have heard of it. I found Sister especially convincing. Evoking Neil Young's Cortez the Killer with its slow build-up it stays an instrumental most of the time with some divine humming of a women's choir. It is only in the last quarter of the song that Stevens' voice emerges and he sings in a very spiritual way about a sister in Detroit. The closer of Seven Swans is The Transfiguration (one minute stream). An exuberant optimistic religious song with banjo and oboe.

The next part of the fifty state series will be on Illinois. Sufjan Stevens recently (March, 5th) performed one song of it live in the studio of the very recommended two hour radio show Spinning on Air hosted by David Garland at WNYC. It was called Chicago (at 18'35'' of the 2nd clip). An upbeat banjo ballad on escaping from Michigan by travelling to Chicago.

Together with Low, Sixteen Horsepower and Tom Liwa Sufjan Stevens now belongs to my favourite artists who do not hide their christianity.

Further reading:

• Interview with Matt Fink for Delusions of Adequacy
• Kitty Empire on the startling rise of an American visionary in The Observer

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