Sufjan Stevens 3: Michigan.

CONCEPT

Of the two Sufjan Stevens albums I know, the two that inaugurate the 50 State Project, Michigan is far and away the easiest to tackle. It may actually be difficult for me to come up with much to say. While this album really impressed me with its freshness and candor, I was so disproportionately blown away by Illinois, that I have difficulty making comparisons now.

Still, there's a lot for me to be invested in here; the album starts close to home. It would be difficult, actually, to invest me more from the very beginning:

Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid)

A brief explanation on Stevens' website explains that he has never lived in Flint, but that his own families' experiences parallel that of many Flintites. Moreover, if he spent much of his childhood in the Detroit area, he probably had at least a cursory familiarity with Flint. Flint is to Detroit much what Joliet is to Chicago, or Newark is to New York City. There are differences of course, but the similarities are significant. In this case, then, the subtitle, "for the unemployed and underpaid" is significant, as it not only grounds the song in Stevens' literal experience, but also clarifies the topic of the lyrics. This is a particularly explicit example of what Stevens' does throughout his work... the subtitles are actual summaries of the songs' subjects.

Of course, no song about Flint written by anyone not from Flint is going to focus on the negative, just as we don't think about the July stillness of Tiananmen Square (or whatever). That said, in my first impression of this song, I was impressed by the dignity implied in the lyrics, which was backed up by the sad, stoic, restrained use of the pianos and horns.

"I forgot the part. Lose my hands to lose my heart. Even if I died alone."

It ends on a fade into silence.

All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!

So okay. He didn't alienate me, and quite possibly sold me, on the Flint song. The transition to and beginning of Naysayers was even more captivating. The lyrics don't make much sense (I alternately intepreted them as first pro-union, then anti-union, and after reading his own online notes of the song, I don't think they deal with unions much at all), so I'm completely riding on the sound here. The song sounds like a Charlie Brown cartoon, particularly one of the segments where Snoopy, Woodstock, and Charlie Brown are on a walk through the neighborhood before they find all of the other kids and break into a jam. Similarly, the lyrics are clear enough (at least) to identify some of Michigan's major problems and then take up a proactive, optimistic approach to finding solutions.

For the Windows In Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
Say Yes! To M!ch!gan!
The Upper Peninsula
and most of the others...

These songs blurred together for me. I have a limited knowledge of either folk or indie rock, but one comparison I made immediately, and one that has appropriate similarities is to the approach used by R.E.M. in Up. Both Michigan and Up feature songs primarily as character profiles. In Up however, the variety and variation of sounds was dramatic, giving each song an immediately recognizable signature. Stevens' doesn't quite achieve this on this album, and in some ways, I don't think he was trying to. The lyrics are lovely, the characters and stories moving and compelling, but the sounds are so similar from song to song that I still have a difficult time differentiating.

This is part of the reason that I have such a difficult time commenting on Michigan after having heard Illinois. Specifically, Illinois addresses this issue so well that I can only look at the similitude as one of the weakenesses of this album.

That said (and playing devil's advocate with myself) I'm hesitant to attribute this to a lack of experience; Stevens had extensive playing and songwriting experience even prior to Michigan but more with the subject he's engaging: himself. The demands of writing about a place he has not lived meant that Stevens had to take a more rigorous, disciplined approach in his second album, and at any rate, the stories he uses in Michigan are already loaded with meaning. The extent to which he reaches beyond his own experience in this album to color it for his listeners is something he must measure as a calculated effect against his own bias.

So this is a mistake, but an understandable mistake, and it's part of the distinctness of the album, not as a piece on Michigan but as a piece on its creator.

Tahquamenon Falls
and other instrumentals

They were pretty.

I don't know, however, that he's really got a solid hold on the direction he wants to take these yet...

Holland

All the time we spent in bed
Counting miles before we set
Fall in love and fall apart
Things will end before they start

Sleeping on Lake Michigan
Factories and marching bands
Lose our clothes in summer time
Lose ourselves to lose our minds
In the summer heat, I might

Something that continually bums me about about "lyric interpretation" site is that they overlook obvious and available information. In this case, I don't think that the song is referring to Stevens' stint at Hope College (which is in Grand Rapids, not Holland), but from comments on his website seems to be based on earlier experiences.

The website was very useful in taking the sometimes vague and muddy lyrics to a more precise meaning. This is an area in which I hope Stevens will grow as he continues to work. When the added explication of the website is continued, this became one of the albums' most gorgeous songs.

Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)

And then there was Detroit!

Surrounded by beautiful but soft and same-sounding songs, Detroit is (deservedly) the focal point of the mid-album. A lot of this is grounded in similarities with Naysayers! If Naysayers is about a proactive to the problems afflicting the state as a whole, then Detroit has a much more directed focus; one of the poorest and most violent cities in the nation.

The song half of the song breaks down into a list comprised of Michigan and Detroit references:

Henry Ford. Henry Ford.
Public Trans. Public Trans.
Pontiac. Pontiac.
Feed the poor. Feed the poor.
City Hall. City Hall.
Windsor Park. Windsor Park.
Saginaw. Saginaw.
After dark. After dark.
Tigers game. Tigers game.
Eighty-four. Eighty-four.
Industry. Industry.
Unemployed. Unemployed.
Gun control. Gun control.
Wolverine. Wolverine.
Iroquois. Iroquois.
Industry. Industry.
Public Trans. Public Trans.
Auto Cars. Auto Cars.
Jefferson. Jefferson.
Michigan. Michigan.

Some of these are places, industries, institutions, and symbols, all possible or presumed assets. The song, then, is broad in the Brechtian sense; it stands above the other songs on the album because it has both a different sound and a different subject.

The polarity of these songs and movements is part of the larger "problem" I've found in Michigan; namely that the songs are either one thing or another, their elements lined up like ducks. To compare with Illinois the song Chicago for all its epic sweep and sound is one of the most intimate and close-in songs on the whole album.

The second half of Michigan is almost wholly comprised of songs that sound pretty and contain trenchant observations or careful and intriguing characters. The arrangement, however, is not memorable.

Romulus

Once when our mother called,
She had a voice of last year's cough.
We passed around the phone,
Sharing a word about Oregon.
When my turn came, I was ashamed.
When my turn came, I was ashamed.

Once when we moved away,
She came to Romulus for a day.
Her Chevrolet broke down.
We prayed it'd never be fixed or found.
We touched her hair, we touched her hair.
We touched her hair, we touched her hair.

When she had her last child, Once when she had some boyfriends, some wild.
She moved away quite far.
Our grandpa bought us a new VCR.
We watched it all night, but grew up in spite of it.
We watched it all night, but grew up in spite of it.

We saw her once last fall.
Our grandpa died in a hospital gown.
She didn't seem to care.
She smoked in her room and colored her hair.

I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her.

Romulus is a perfect example of what I'm talking about... I can sort of hum it in my head, because I like the story so much I've listed to it an above-average amount... but only just so...

Vito's Ordination Song
Marching Band

The album continues with increasingly breathy songs, stories, and anecdotes until the last two tracks hint toward a longer, larger journey.

First, Vito's Ordination Song named for a friend. The story involves a passing reference to Tecumsah and Hell, two small towns (Hell is barely a speck on the map) which might be considered journeys in and of themselves. And an ordination, just like a wedding or an introduction is thought of mainly as a beginning, not an end.

The final song on the album, Marching Band is as based in personal details and anecdote as most of the album, but it also captures some of the bredth of songs like Naysayers! and Detroit! (my, this man loves exclamations):

One dark day the trees began a trumpet sound,
trumpet sound
We sat listening patiently, the sky was near
and i felt the trembling motion
we ran out to see the future, from the ground

The imagery is some of the album's less ambiguous religious metaphor. In the end, however, the journey described is immediate, earthly, small:

We returned and set the table, by the door

So who, frankly, is surprised he wanted to move on and do another state?

* * * * *

I've spent most of this review harping on several (okay, one) point, and I don't want that to draw too much focus from my enjoyment of this album. It may not be a first album, but it feels like a first album, and I think a lot of that results from Stevens trying on a new project. He was still getting his sea legs, and for all the benefits of writing about a state he knows intimately is that he cannot know truly how little his listeners know if it intimately.

And yet, I've lived in Michigan for most of my life, and I had trouble differentiating songs.

I wouldn't have found so much in Michigan to criticize if it wasn't for the clear leaps and bounds Stevens took in producing Illinois. It is a great first album, but still, a first album.

END OF POST.