Currently Listening: Sufjan Stevens

I became a Sufjan Stevens fan while living in his homestate of Michigan for four years. His music is pretty prolific on the college radio up there, and I wasn't there long before I heard his siren song. This folk/alt-pop indie singer/songwriting amazed me with his ability to blend cheery pop-like vocals with eclectic arrangements of instruments and harmonies. His music makes you feel good, almost in a Polyphonic-Spree way, but without the sugary-sweet aftertaste and repetitive lyrics. I heard the Michigan album first, but it was Illinois that engulfed me. Arguably one of my favorite albums of all time, "Come On, Feel the Illinoise!", its full title, is a great blend of American Folk, Pop, Rock, and experimentation. The song titles are compleely absurd (i.e. "To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and It Involves an Inner Tube, Bath Mats, and 21 Able-bodied Men"), but the orchestrations and arrangements are brilliant. When Illinois came out, I was hooked as a fan. Since then, I've slowly acquired other albums he has done, including the recent Christmas box set, Songs for Christmas, thanks to a Borders gift card for my birthday. While each album is unique with its own quirks, brilliances, and flops, they are all unmistakably Sufjan. You know his style when you hear it, and all of his albums have it.

Then yesterday I got Enjoy Your Rabbit, Sufjan's second LP released in 2002, as a free download from eMusic. I was not prepared for what I got. I assumed that it would be different, as every album has some assumed uniquness, but I didn't think it would be THIS different. First of all, it's an instrumental album; no lyrics and no singing (although the human voice does seem to make an appearance on a few3 songs as an instrument, with little more than "ah" and "bum" (the one exception is "Year of the Rooster" which has a woman speaking what I believe to be a form of Chinese over the music). But that really isn't the surprising part. Secondly, it's ... are you ready for this?... an electronic album. That's right. The king of indie folk and pop acoustics actually made an electronic album. That's like saying the Pope listens to Metallica on his iPod. It just twists your image of the person in a way you weren't expecting.

But that is not to say that it is a bad album. As someone who enjoys a good electrobeat from time to time, I actually like it. Now, it's not his best album, but he certainly stretches himself with Enjoy Your Rabbit. The only problem is that it doesn't really sound like a Sufjan album. I wouldn't have known that this was his unless someone told me. Now that I know, I can hear themes and musical ideas that are present elsewhere in his discography, but it is largely a huge departure. To give you some idea, it sounds like Thom Yorke's The Eraser on happy pills. Or, it sounds like what The Eraser would have been if Sufjan's attitude had been infused into Thom Yorke's creativity and penchant for electronica. Frankly, that's a combination I like, not love, but certainly like. I only have two questions: 1) Why hasn't this electronic streak appeared in other Sufjan albums, and 2) Is it just me, or does "Year of the Boar" sound suspiciously like the game music when you fight a boss in Super Mario Brothers 2?

Favorite Tracks: Undecided. Lots of 4-star songs, but probably no 5-star songs

Side note:
I still can't get enough of Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna are You the Destroyer? It is probably in my top 3 albums of all time, right up there with Tiny Music and Kid A. The video from "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" is pretty bizarre. Check it out: