Michigan Seems Like A Dream: Sufjan Stevens’ Postmodern Dilemma

Part I: Where the author’s affection for Sufjan Stevens and his music is detailed

I have known people from Michigan but I have never been there. But, like some drunken, lively patron at a bar, I become overzealous and forceful when I uncover their association with the state. Regardless of the level of our acquaintance, I always inquire if they have heard of Sufjan Stevens and, if so, what their thoughts are on his brilliant conceptual album Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State (or simply Michigan). Depending on their response to my inquiry, I can launch into enthusiastic and rambling descriptions of who Sufjan Stevens is, what his contributions to the musical realm are, and why it is absolutely imperative that that individual meet me at a specified time so I can hand deliver a fresh copy of Michigan to them.

The arc of my affection for Stevens and his music, I believe, accurately resembles his creative arc. What began as a bold, incredulous vision brought on by artistic integrity and near-limitless creativity has almost very nearly ended in a lack of interest and hopeless abandonment. Stevens currently seems to be suffering from an inability to justify his desire to create and distribute music as he recently told an interviewer, “I’m at a point where I no longer have a deep desire to share my music with anyone.” And although he has been quick to clarify that he is not “retiring” or giving up on music, it feels like this is something of an end to the stunning creative output Stevens managed to produce within this decade. His ambition has been far-reaching and inspiring and, regardless of whether or not he chooses to continue his musical pursuits, let alone if he will return to his original “50 States” project, Stevens has cut a sidelong, meandering path through the oftentimes tepid heart of this decade.

Stevens crafted two mostly overlooked albums of decent quality before his ode to his home state appeared in July 2003. Michigan’s release month undercuts everything the album encompasses and everything it exalts: songs about snow plows in the frigid Upper Peninsula and the unemployed and homeless masses scattered through the icy, lake-surrounded state. The songs do not carry the same gravity in the heat of summer as they do in the (literal) dead of winter but like the intense summer months, Michigan did creep in slowly and unexpectedly. And it turned out to be a defining moment in the first millennial decade of independent music.

Part II: Where Michigan and the Asthmatic Kitty label become known to the public

Michigan, to me and the others I’ve conferred with, came on like a wondrous, snowy dream. It was the most unassuming, delicate, and spiritual recording I’d encountered since being introduced to Classical music—seconded only by Stevens’ bare-bones Seven Swans. Stevens didn’t just show up by himself, though; he brought his own label, Asthmatic Kitty, with him. And with his label a new crop of unnoticed and/or undiscovered talent spilled over into the indie rock area as well. Asthmatic Kitty went from being a virtually unknown record label in a sea of fledgling choices to becoming the de facto stop for all things Sufjan or Sufjan-approved. Having the stamp of approval from the artist who was granted the honor of Pitchfork’s 3rd Best Album of 2003 (Michigan) and The Best Album of 2005 (Illinois), carries with it the potential to boost any Sufjan-affiliated artist’s visibility in the indie scene.

A score of Asthmatic Kitty bands such as Castanets, The Welcome Wagon, Half-Handed Cloud, DM Stith, and My Brightest Diamond, garnered more notoriety and press than they might have before Stevens become the poster-child for sensitive and perceptive musicians. Stevens’ acoustic-centered, intensely quiet album Seven Swans branded him with more of a “folk” sobriquet than was necessary, though it wasn’t altogether undeserved; Seven Swans trades the expansive, orchestral structures explored on Michigan for sparse meditations on spirituality and nature. Songs such as “Abraham” and “The Dress Looks Nice on You” are fragile compositions that display transparent emotion and heartbreaking honesty.

Incidentally, and whether by pattern or under the influence of music’s cyclical nature, both Michigan and Seven Swans became unlikely precursors to what became termed as “freak folk.” Somehow, Sufjan became scooped up and branded in this unfortunate category, though, oddly enough, most of his labelmates avoided it. The freak-folk moniker marginalized artists, in my opinion, and appeared mostly to refer to a few free-thinking, free-form, naturalist artists who gravitated towards more primal and elemental—and mostly acoustic based—sounds. Sufjan contained enough of these elements for a relatively clueless and pattern-enforcing musical press to lump him in to this circle, but artists such as Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart, Vetiver, Cocorosie, and Joanna Newsom rose to the forefront of this genre.

Ironically, their music was simply a smaller subset of a larger emerging indie folk scene. These artists weren’t as accessible as, say, Iron and Wine, Kings of Convenience, M. Ward, or Elliot Smith, but they all operated with a more restrained, quieter method than was previously allowed in the decade before. If the ’90s were all about grunge guitars, pop hooks, spending cash, and simultaneously feeling a sense of self-loathing and celebration, then these artists offered the antithesis: unplug, tone it down, keep it honest, and let the world come to you if it wants to.

Part III: Where the freak-folk subgenre serves as an example of the postmodern dilemma

With freak-folk serving as a prime example, the major issue of the postmodern artist became known; how do we classify music that isn’t easily classifiable? And, furthermore, why do we find it necessary to do so? (For the record, I am defining the postmodern era as the year 2000-present. I understand that art and literature define postmodernism in different terms and eras, but I am focusing on the fragmentation of the listener’s habits as defined by the rise of “indie” rock and the near-dissolution of the album and the major-label system that promotes it in juxtaposition to the fragmented, accessible mp3 culture.)

The term “indie” quickly ran out of room to house all the musicians who opted out of traditional methods of artistic notoriety and instead held fast to a smaller, more dedicated fan-bases and a DIY ethic. And more and more music magazines, subsets of fans, and the emergence of blogs tagged groups of artists with micro-genre labels such as “garage-rock revival” “alterna-pop,” “new soul,” and “freak-folk” mostly as a way to keep up with them; a kind of musical filing system, if you will.

But the boundaries in these micro-genres are now further indistinguishable. I would not refer to Iron and Wine as a folk act any longer, just as I would not give credence to anyone who tagged Pearl Jam as a grunge band. Animal Collective is moving farther away from their folk roots and into more electronic instrumentation, and Devendra Banhart’s latest LP is being released on Warner Brothers records—home to R.E.M. and Rilo Kiley, but also to Cher, Big & Rich, and Seal.

Even if the classification of these bands worked for a time, the musical elements that begin to encroach into their constantly evolving, mercurial artistry defy easy classification. The White Stripes may have started out as a minimalist garage-revival band, but by the time their last album was released they were pirating riffs from country music artists like George Jones and Dolly Parton and throwing bass and brass instrumentation onto multiple tracks. Likewise, bands like Bright Eyes and My Morning Jacket tried out new stylistic skins; both artists have all but abandoned their earlier personas and ditched the elements that made them notable—for Bright Eyes it was the rambling Dylan-on-emo folk numbers and for MMJ it was the reverb-drenched setting on their amplifiers.

But postmodern listeners are more forgiving and accepting of artists’ migrations into different genres. No longer do we take artists to task for altering or evolving their sound. Case in point, think about U2’s Pop and the beating they took in the press when compared to Wilco’s multiple sonic incarnations from A.M. to Wilco. Now when Modest Mouse create an uber-radio friendly single (“Float On”) or Beck transitions from neo-folkie back to electronic-maestro then back again, it doesn’t register much on the outrage scale. Or at least not like it might have 15 years ago in the mid-late ’90s. Instead, we view it as the artists’ right and ability to mutate and skip around from genre to genre as they search for a musical identity or two.

Part IV: Where Sufjan Stevens solidifies his reputation as a foremost postmodern artist

Returning to Stevens, in 2005 our man released a little album called Come on Feel the Illinoise, the second album in his epic “50 states” series. Little else can be written that hasn’t already been about Illinois. It is generally thought to be superior to Michigan and is far more epic in scope and grand in execution. It will stand to be a reckoning point in the musical history of the first millennial decade. If Michigan was Stevens wading knee-deep into the waters of his musical concepts, Illinois was Stevens throwing himself into the deep end. The album was massive in concept and design (22 tracks) and there was so much packed into it that the leftovers had to be released a year later (The Avalanche) as a full album of “outtakes and extras” that was just as grand (21 tracks long, and 3 versions of the song “Chicago”).

Stevens was the decade’s Mozart, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Mark Twain, and Ansel Adams all in one with an identity as big as the TV show Seinfeld and as hipster-cool as Nick Hornby or Dave Eggers. You really weren’t tuned into the indie world if you weren’t a fan of Sufjan Stevens. Blogs and music sites heaped deserved praise upon him and buzzed about which state he would tackle next in his “50 States” series. Some held polls to find out; others just clamored for any scrap of Sufjan-related (and Asthmatic Kitty-related) news. And then, for three years, nothing.

Three years with minimal output except for the occasional song that appeared on a compilation but gave no hint of his future plans. For an artist whose work was so consistent and consistently amazing—one album every year from 2003-2006—it seemed that Stevens was going to relax for a while.

Part V: Where Sufjan Stevens’ latest project, The BQE, begins to confound expectations

Stevens released The BQE, a symphonic work commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the hula-hoop (yes, the hula-hoop) in late October 2009. This project had been in development for some time and was reported on consistently in music circles (mostly due, again, to the draw that Stevens still has in the indie realm). It’s purely a piece of classically composed music, sans lyrics, sans guitars, and what’s surprising about The BQE is how much fans are consuming it. The BQE isn’t a completely unexpected turn for Stevens, but it is very clearly intended to be different from his regular output.

The BQE is pleasant enough to listen to and displays Stevens’ compositional abilities rather well. Above all, it demonstrates his willingness to be more than an indie/folk icon and the project allows him to indulge in thoughtful, equally grand ideas, concepts, and compositions, thus making him more flexible of an artist than others who are content within their cyclical and structured realms of the pop song.

We always knew he embraced big ideas, but the extent to which he refuses to be pinned down or restrained by a single idea (e.g., the “50 States” project) points to both our ability as postmodern listeners and consumers to accept an artists’ indulgence, and his ability to create trust with the listener in his musical identity. Regardless of the fragmentation that our listening styles are subject to in postmodernity, we, as listeners, are able to offer leniency when the patterns that we are normally accustomed to are no longer present in an artist’s body of work. No longer are we bound by musical expectations, but additionally we no longer allow expectations to be a part of our listening experience. The elements that we identify with in certain artists that are cast aside are inevitably picked up by other artists looking for new identities and elements to add to their music. In other words, if Stevens can’t deliver on your expectations, others can.

I am going to officially dub The BQE as Stevens’ “New York” album in his “50 States” project. I think it will be a while before Stevens returns to his “50 States” project if he returns to it at all. And I also think we’re going to be waiting a long time for a new proper Sufjan Stevens album. For me, The BQE was confirmation enough of Stevens’ delay because it signaled a pretty dynamic departure from what he had been crafting and working towards with both Michigan and Illinois, but also because the lapse of time and momentum pointed towards another inevitable negative effect of postmodernism: mixed identity crises.

Like the clogged, ill-conceived expressway that Stevens pays tribute to in The BQE one could easily surmise that, after an initial, promising show of gravitas, what we’re left with is a string of good intentions and creative stasis—both elements of a disposable, car-driven culture where only the accessible and disposable are valued. Besides that, however, the music on The BQE is only mediocre when compared to what we know Stevens to be capable of. Those who listen to it may not appreciate the musical structure and composition as much as they admire the artist behind it. After all, when was the last time you chatted about Rachmaninoff or Bartok with one of your indie-rock buddies? And there are plenty of other artists who have dove into symphonic compositions, free-jazz experimentation, and film scores without as much fanfare (e.g., Elvis Costello, Thurston Moore, U2).

There are brilliant moments on The BQE, however. Movement II is entrancing and lovely, and Movement IV contains a strange and disarming piece of electronic underpinning in the center of a tranquil symphony—much like, say, a blaring horn or squelching tires. Tackling the subject of an expressway through symphony composition is something Stevens would indulge in, especially once you understand that a multimedia film and graphic novel are included with the deluxe package. But Stevens’ refusal to adhere to his original concept that began so promisingly, and seems to be indefinitely on hold, is maddening to those of us who haven’t grown accustomed to our roles as postmodern listeners.

Stevens’ artistic identity is not defined by albums or his projects; it’s defined by the struggle to reconcile his identity with the demands of his fans and a music-writing public that yearns for more. Stevens himself has recently stated that, “…I’m starting to get sick of my conceptual ideas. I’m tired of these grand, epic endeavours, and wanting to just make music for the joy of making music and having it be immediate…And I think it has to do with a creative crisis too. I’m wondering what am I doing? What is a song even? I’m questioning, what’s the point of a song? Is a song antiquated? Does it have any power any more?” In postmodernity, these questions naturally arise from the artist through the work process, but these questions are what fuel the artist to continue on an exploration of his or her work; the questions are not the endgame, they’re the beginning.

Part VI: Where Sufjan Stevens’ future in postmodernity is questioned by the author

I don’t think an artist like Stevens is capable of surviving in the shifting music industry—an industry where the LP, in physical form, is survived only by those who cling to it nostalgically. If he is, then he and a handful of other bands—perhaps The Arcade Fire and maybe (and it’s a big maybe) Radiohead—will be the ones who keep it alive just based on their audience and their own grand ideas. Stevens flew in just under the radar before the conflicting emotions and confusing overload of blogs and bands really exploded. I’m glad he did, too, because, if nothing else, the output we have now is still fresh and still reveals layers upon layers at each listen, but still feels embraceable even if it goes unnoticed for a year or so.

I don’t want Stevens to quit music or give up on his “50 States” project, but by participating in this era by indulging in the rapid-fire succession of new releases and throw-away demos from bands who may or may not be around in six months, we end up sacrificing those who demand closer attention and who’s musical identities are not fully formed. It might be a chance I’m willing to take because I do believe (rather stupidly and optimistically, I’ll admit) that I will be able to discover artists that are as creative and enduring as Sufjan Stevens through the public relations and musical machines that have been embraced in the new millennium. It’s a daunting task; one as big as attempting to sum up an area as diverse and divisive as America and her 50 states.

But we’ve always needed and craved grand sweeping ideas. It’s what the actual BQE began as and it’s what I hear in Michigan and Illinois time and again. And it sounds like a listless, drifting dream that ends neither in certainty nor in contentedness, but instead leaves us with a dark ambiguity that is at once comforting and aching, similar to the confusion we experience while looking back to see where this turbulent era has taken us and how much further we have to go.

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3. Revival or Renewal: The cultural influence of O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Tagged as: 2009 Year End