Aug. 25, 2010 - Issue #775: Eamon McGrath
All Delighted People EP
Sufjan Stevens {recordings_bands_mg} All Delighted People EP {/recordings_bands_mg}
Asthmatic Kitty, 2010
4
It's been five years since Sufjan Stevens released a proper album. A B-side collection, some original Christmas songs and a commissioned, blip-happy instrumental about a Brooklyn Expressway filled that span of time and kept him on radar, but those never felt like Sufjan albums, like the focused efforts of someone plumbing their personal creative depths to see what comes out.Then, out of the silent blue comes the All Delighted People EP, arriving last week to little fanfare from Stevens himself, just suddenly available for download on his Asthmatic Kitty label's website. It's an EP in name only—the eight songs span an hour, with closer "Djohariah" lasting close to 20 minutes—and retreads most of the musical territory he's covered before, but blends together the divided styles he's focused on individually on previous albums. The acoustic-led-folk of Seven Swans and the electronic dabbling of Enjoy Your Rabbit are folded into the fleet orchestration Stevens mastered on Come On Feel The Illinoise!—with the result that All Delighted People seems like an artist finding his grip on the old bag of tricks once more.
Delighted People picks up around Illinoise! territory: "All Delighted People" starts as a choir-led funeral march, building to a massive cacophony powered by what sounds like an orchestra playing in a mosh pit; discordant strings, cutting out and rushing up again. It's epic in scope, more of a score than a song: the music rises, crescendos with bittersweet peaks, drops down to electric guitar plucks and Stevens' voice, and then rises up again. "I tried my best / I tried in vain / But the world is a mess," he cries, choral woo-ooh's backing him up. Apparently about both the apocalypse and Paul Simon's "Sounds of Silence," there's another version of the song here (the positively-brief-at-eight-minutes-long "Classic Rock Version") that's stripped down, with brassier orchestration, and consequently feels a little tighter. But there's something to be said for opening with your most ambitious foot forwards and having it be enthralling.
Between those, the simpler, shorter, folkier tracks are less ambitious but no less compelling. The gorgeous guitar line on "Heirloom" and the spidery piano of "The Owl and the Tanager," show Stevens can still focus in on making a few spare components haunting or beautiful when he wants to. "Enchanting Ghost," wouldn't be out of place among Seven Swans' misty folk, and the building digital buzz of "From the Mouth of Gabriel," revisits Stevens' religious allusion.
The songs are sometimes complex, sometimes simple, but never dull. Melodies appear and vanish and get replaced like free-jazz meditations on a theme. It feels pretty unrestrained, and Stevens is able to make that more than just artistic indulgence—it's accessible and engaging, and a reminder of why the guy topped out so many top-10 lists back in '05. V vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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