Sufjan Stevens – The BQE

What can anybody write about Sufjan Stevens? How can he be categorized? He’s a folk singer. He’s a composer. He’s an experimental instrumentalist. He’s writing an album for all fifty states. He’s releasing a new Christmas album every year. He’s working on an album about birds. He is… the most interesting man in the world.

While he’s had his disciples begging for a new state to come under his keen and boundless scrutiny, Stevens has either gotten bored of that idea or just decided to shelve it for awhile. He’s released no full-lengths since The Avalanche, which itself was a slew of b-sides and outtakes, but he’s hardly been lazy. Here, finally, is something new, and to those who follow his work, it should come as no surprise that it is thoroughly weird.

It’s called The BQE, and it’s an instrumental tribute to New York’s (kind of) infamous Brooklyn Queen’s Expressway. Asthmatic Kitty’s press release described the piece as being “inspired by the programmatic symphonies of the Impressionists, but it aspires to the pageantry of Copland and the melodrama of a John Williams movie score.” So, there you go.

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music – where he performed the entirety of The BQE live with a film accompaniment, small band, choir, and hula hoopers – Sufjan himself described the street as “one of the world’s ugliest expressways” which was probably his inspiration. The only consistent theme in Sufjan’s music is one of redemption – a systematic reclaiming of America’s most mundane features and infusing them with a wild and reckless holiness. He turned the Upper Peninsula into a stairway to heaven, and no matter where you are when you hear “The Seer’s Tower,” you’ll be driven to throw yourself at that building’s mighty base and pray for rain. Sufjan has that way about him, so small wonder that one of the world’s ugliest expressways would hold an innate appeal for Mr. Stevens. If anyone could make the BQE beautiful, he can. And did.

Musically, it owes some obvious homage to Phillip Glass, of whom Sufjan has never been cagey about his admiration for. And there’s not a little Brian Eno sprinkled throughout either, but those are only vague inspirations. Really, The BQE is its own thing. It jumps tones and moods with abandon. There are strings. There are wind instruments. There are brass instruments. There are choirs. There’s the electro blitzkrieg that’s been prevalent on his offerings for the I’m Not There soundtrack and Dark Was the Night compilation. There’s every instrument you’ve ever heard of. There’s a few you haven’t. In short, there’s simply no reservation or modesty employed whatsoever.

He’s never been one to hold back though, and – against all odds – always come out better for it, perhaps because it’s hard to take it all in complete seriousness. The self aware irony in Sufjan’s grandiosity has long been his saving grace – even as he’s churning out some of most unwieldy ideas in modern music, it’s been with an unassuming smile and sly wink. Case in point: the grandest, most John-Williamsy song on The BQE is a majestic horn number unmajestically titled “Introductory Fanfare for the Hooper Heroes.”

But he’s also capable of disarming elegance, having constructed songs of a stunning and humbling prettiness. The delicately twisting “Movement III” blooms at a modest pace until it’s reached a grand orchestral beauty, reminiscent of a deconstructed take on “Chicago.” And that first movement has some delightfully delayed resolutions that go back and forth between piano intervals and, apparently, every instrument in reach. It’s a lovely tension, with fascinating transitions.

So, Sufjan has, somehow, struck gold again. One wonders when, in all his zany experimentation, he’ll finally bite off more than he can chew. He gets mixed reviews as it is, mostly owing to his audacity. Surely, some of his projects look bloated and messy from the wrong angle – but projects like this might just be the only place big enough for Stevens’ creativity to flourish. I, like anyone, would love to see an honest-to-goodness music-and-lyrics album from Sufjan sometime soon, but it’s probably best not to rush someone who is so clearly marching to the beat of their own drum section. The BQE is a marvelous experience, one of the year’s finest albums, and one more heretofore unexplored side from one of this generation’s most gifted and imaginative artists.

Oh, by the way. If your mind hasn’t been blown yet today and you’d like to keep it that way, then you might want to refrain from reading Asthamtic Kitty’s press release on The BQE here. Click at your peril.

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Tagged as: Brooklyn, experimental, instrumental