Wow…really? A far cry from my old Phish shows (I know I know…make fun of the hippy).
Anyway…thanks!
Anyway…thanks!
Sufjan Stevens roll call
Yeah man, no four hour marathon here, and no setbreak either. I miss those days too.
i'm all about the cheerleading. really.
I thought it was a pretty good show, but I was a bit disappointed for these reasons three:
1) No Katrina Kerns
2) It was little too low energy. All the songs were great, but I think it could've been paced better - he seemed to have grouped all the slow songs from Illinois and the Seven Swans songs together.
3) Stellas are now $6 :mad:
1) No Katrina Kerns
2) It was little too low energy. All the songs were great, but I think it could've been paced better - he seemed to have grouped all the slow songs from Illinois and the Seven Swans songs together.
3) Stellas are now $6 :mad:
Agreed - rather low energy show. I thought Sufjan was searching for his intonation and key in his vocals more often than I would have expected.
I was also struck by the fact that he doesn't seem to be a very comfortable guitar player - perhaps his emphasis on playing tons of instruments means that he's not super at any of them.
All in all, good, but not spectacular.
However, the cover of the Star Spangled Banner was magnificent, as was the opening number.
I was also struck by the fact that he doesn't seem to be a very comfortable guitar player - perhaps his emphasis on playing tons of instruments means that he's not super at any of them.
All in all, good, but not spectacular.
However, the cover of the Star Spangled Banner was magnificent, as was the opening number.
the vocals on Metropolis were TERRIBLE. aside from that, i thought they pulled it together pretty well. that's not easy stuff to play live.
The opening number is the same thing he started with about 10 months ago at Black Cat. I really like the song but have not been able to find a recording of it.
Originally posted by tbmtt:agreed, I liked it too…but I found the concert to be somewhat lackluster overall. The cheering was funny, but I wish they'd put that much time into a proper sound check before the show.
The opening number is the same thing he started with about 10 months ago at Black Cat. I really like the song but have not been able to find a recording of it.
The Singer Full of the Holy, and Team, Spirit
By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 29, 2005; C01
Sufjan Stevens came bounding onto the 9:30 club stage in star-spangled coveralls and a Chicago Cubs cap and put his inflatable Superman doll down so that he might pick up his banjo. There was a divine comfort in this, if you were looking for some.
Not that anybody noticed what he was doing, what with his backing band decked out in matching college-cheer-squad outfits and doing straight-leg kickouts and spirit-finger waves all over the stage Tuesday night.
And that's to say nothing of the actual cheers that followed – Stevens's vaguely absurd performance artist way of ramping up to various songs from "Illinois," his new chamber-folk concept album of songs entirely about the Land of Lincoln. (One of the band's cheers, for instance, went like this: "Rea-dy? O-KAY! Goooooo Decatur! / It's either now / Or Later! / . . . The great eman- / cipator! / Abraham, he's the man," etc. This is how they introduced the song "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!" – and yes, that's the actual title, exclamation point included.)
But don't be fooled by Stevens's idiosyncrasies, of which there are plenty. Beneath all the quirkiness, there's a literary singer whose songs are deeply spiritual, though not always in a blind-faith kind of way.
Stevens is the artist who might have been birthed by Flannery O'Connor and Nick Drake, had they ever hooked up.
Actually, to play that fantasy out, O'Connor and Drake probably would've had twins, and the brother of Sufjan (SOOF-yawn) would've gotten the much easier to pronounce name of Samuel Beam. Beam makes music under the moniker Iron and Wine. Together, Stevens and Iron and Wine are the favored artists among the bearded elite, aka Critics and Indie Hipsters Who Love the Soft, Sensitive Folk-Rock Stuff and Songs That Ask Interesting Questions About Faith.
(And if O'Connor-Drake had triplets ? Number Three would've been another folkie named Devendra Banhart. Maybe. But he'd first have to find more religion and become a bit less bizarre to be accepted by the family.)
Anyway. A quiet, almost fragile sort of singer with a hushed, vaguely quivering tenor, Stevens isn't afraid of religious rumination. Not in the least.
"Casimir Pulaski Day," for instance, is a devastating ballad about a dying friend whose cancer can't be cured with prayer alone. In fact, it can't be cured at all, and the friend dies, and Stevens is left wondering about the unanswered prayers.
"Oh the glory when he took our place / But he took my shoulders and he shook my face / And he takes and he takes and he takes," Stevens sang, and the overstuffed room was so quiet that you could've heard the trickling of a baptismal font.
It's no small feat to get the 9:30 crowd to shaddup, and so Stevens – apparently not wanting to prick the suddenly somber bubble in the room – raced right into another dark, delicate acoustic number, "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." The song is about the clown-suit-wearing pedophilic killer from Illinois. But it's also a morality tale and a case study in sin, and it ends thus: "In my best behavior, I am just like him / Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid." (Worth noting: As he performed the song, Stevens was wearing a Fighting Illini outfit that matched his bandmates', and blow-up Superman was still onstage, and the whole thing was very contextually strange and weird.)
For all his spiritual questioning, Stevens seems like something of an evangelist in his recordings – particularly last year's "Seven Swans." And his concerts can feel like Bible study, albeit with more melody and an atypical wardrobe.
"Abraham," performed Tuesday, was basically a Genesis riff in which Stevens warbled, "Abraham, put off on your son / Take instead the ram / Until Jesus comes." And so on.
But Stevens also performed secular songs with lighter lyrics about, for instance, the Peoria opera house, "chicken-mobiles" and the Cubs. His five-piece backing band occasionally rocked out, and there were more than a few coordinated cheers. There was also this: After every song, Stevens applauded himself. Of course, nobody in the room took issue. When Brother Sufjan's Traveling Salvation Show comes to town, the faithful flock.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802564_pf.html
By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 29, 2005; C01
Sufjan Stevens came bounding onto the 9:30 club stage in star-spangled coveralls and a Chicago Cubs cap and put his inflatable Superman doll down so that he might pick up his banjo. There was a divine comfort in this, if you were looking for some.
Not that anybody noticed what he was doing, what with his backing band decked out in matching college-cheer-squad outfits and doing straight-leg kickouts and spirit-finger waves all over the stage Tuesday night.
And that's to say nothing of the actual cheers that followed – Stevens's vaguely absurd performance artist way of ramping up to various songs from "Illinois," his new chamber-folk concept album of songs entirely about the Land of Lincoln. (One of the band's cheers, for instance, went like this: "Rea-dy? O-KAY! Goooooo Decatur! / It's either now / Or Later! / . . . The great eman- / cipator! / Abraham, he's the man," etc. This is how they introduced the song "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!" – and yes, that's the actual title, exclamation point included.)
But don't be fooled by Stevens's idiosyncrasies, of which there are plenty. Beneath all the quirkiness, there's a literary singer whose songs are deeply spiritual, though not always in a blind-faith kind of way.
Stevens is the artist who might have been birthed by Flannery O'Connor and Nick Drake, had they ever hooked up.
Actually, to play that fantasy out, O'Connor and Drake probably would've had twins, and the brother of Sufjan (SOOF-yawn) would've gotten the much easier to pronounce name of Samuel Beam. Beam makes music under the moniker Iron and Wine. Together, Stevens and Iron and Wine are the favored artists among the bearded elite, aka Critics and Indie Hipsters Who Love the Soft, Sensitive Folk-Rock Stuff and Songs That Ask Interesting Questions About Faith.
(And if O'Connor-Drake had triplets ? Number Three would've been another folkie named Devendra Banhart. Maybe. But he'd first have to find more religion and become a bit less bizarre to be accepted by the family.)
Anyway. A quiet, almost fragile sort of singer with a hushed, vaguely quivering tenor, Stevens isn't afraid of religious rumination. Not in the least.
"Casimir Pulaski Day," for instance, is a devastating ballad about a dying friend whose cancer can't be cured with prayer alone. In fact, it can't be cured at all, and the friend dies, and Stevens is left wondering about the unanswered prayers.
"Oh the glory when he took our place / But he took my shoulders and he shook my face / And he takes and he takes and he takes," Stevens sang, and the overstuffed room was so quiet that you could've heard the trickling of a baptismal font.
It's no small feat to get the 9:30 crowd to shaddup, and so Stevens – apparently not wanting to prick the suddenly somber bubble in the room – raced right into another dark, delicate acoustic number, "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." The song is about the clown-suit-wearing pedophilic killer from Illinois. But it's also a morality tale and a case study in sin, and it ends thus: "In my best behavior, I am just like him / Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid." (Worth noting: As he performed the song, Stevens was wearing a Fighting Illini outfit that matched his bandmates', and blow-up Superman was still onstage, and the whole thing was very contextually strange and weird.)
For all his spiritual questioning, Stevens seems like something of an evangelist in his recordings – particularly last year's "Seven Swans." And his concerts can feel like Bible study, albeit with more melody and an atypical wardrobe.
"Abraham," performed Tuesday, was basically a Genesis riff in which Stevens warbled, "Abraham, put off on your son / Take instead the ram / Until Jesus comes." And so on.
But Stevens also performed secular songs with lighter lyrics about, for instance, the Peoria opera house, "chicken-mobiles" and the Cubs. His five-piece backing band occasionally rocked out, and there were more than a few coordinated cheers. There was also this: After every song, Stevens applauded himself. Of course, nobody in the room took issue. When Brother Sufjan's Traveling Salvation Show comes to town, the faithful flock.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802564_pf.html
"The Bearded Elite"
Come on, the only reason to grow a full beard is if you have an ugly face you want to cover.
Come on, the only reason to grow a full beard is if you have an ugly face you want to cover.
Originally posted by Xavier Bush, Power Forward:laziness is also a very valid reason
"The Bearded Elite"
Come on, the only reason to grow a full beard is if you have an ugly face you want to cover.
Then shave once a week like me. Takes five minutes of your week.
And is there a chick in the world who digs a guy with a long, flowing beard? Sam Beam, what a sexy man. As my wife says when I try to play an Iron and Wine cd, "Oooh, please don't play that fucking freak."
And is there a chick in the world who digs a guy with a long, flowing beard? Sam Beam, what a sexy man. As my wife says when I try to play an Iron and Wine cd, "Oooh, please don't play that fucking freak."
Originally posted by HoyaParanoia:
Originally posted by Xavier Bush, Power Forward:laziness is also a very valid reason
"The Bearded Elite"
Come on, the only reason to grow a full beard is if you have an ugly face you want to cover.
that review is far more "look at me, i know alot about music and can make fun of hipsters!" than it is an actual assessment of the show.
i hate writers like that.
i hate writers like that.
Originally posted by chimbly sweep:Look at the author's name.
that review is far more "look at me, i know alot about music and can make fun of hipsters!" than it is an actual assessment of the show.
i hate writers like that.
Is this the guy who took Segal's place?
Where is the writer making fun of hipsters? I mean, he rightfully should, but I dont' see where he does it.
Originally posted by chimbly sweep:
that review is far more "look at me, i know alot about music and can make fun of hipsters!" than it is an actual assessment of the show.
i hate writers like that.
Originally posted by Xavier Bush, Power Forward:Wait, why is Sam Beam a freak? 'Cuz he has a semi-long beard? Seriously, that makes him a freak????
And is there a chick in the world who digs a guy with a long, flowing beard? Sam Beam, what a sexy man. As my wife says when I try to play an Iron and Wine cd, "Oooh, please don't play that fucking freak."
Dropping Nick Drake in a review is no longer defined as knowing a lot about music.
Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:appears to be the case
Originally posted by chimbly sweep:Look at the author's name.
that review is far more "look at me, i know alot about music and can make fun of hipsters!" than it is an actual assessment of the show.
i hate writers like that.
Is this the guy who took Segal's place?
http://www.washingtonian.com/inwashington/buzz/2005/0819.html
Yes.
Originally posted by Arlette:
Originally posted by Xavier Bush, Power Forward:Wait, why is Sam Beam a freak? 'Cuz he has a semi-long beard? Seriously, that makes him a freak????
And is there a chick in the world who digs a guy with a long, flowing beard? Sam Beam, what a sexy man. As my wife says when I try to play an Iron and Wine cd, "Oooh, please don't play that fucking freak."
Originally posted by HoyaParanoia:Beards keep the cold wind off too.
Originally posted by Xavier Bush, Power Forward:laziness is also a very valid reason
"The Bearded Elite"
Come on, the only reason to grow a full beard is if you have an ugly face you want to cover.