States Of The Union

It is a pity that more people are aware of the YouTube flavor-of-the-week than singer-songwriter-genius Sufjan Stevens. After releasing his mythographical-cum-personal "state albums" for Michigan and Illinois, Stevens has boldly declared his intention to create an album for all fifty states in the Union. To many the ambition seems more than audacious, to some absurd, yet a close study of Stevens' music gives one the hope that not only will he complete his 50 opuses (opii?), but that he will continue to make each state album as personally affecting and sprawling as his first two. Much pabulum in the New York press has been made of Sufjan Stevens: he has had to endure labels such as "Wonder Boy" and other monikers that sell magazines but neglect the justice and brilliance of his music. This post is not meant to be a history of his musical training, his prodigious and capacious abilities as a musician, but, rather, his devotion to uniting through music an America never more polarized than it is today.

For the Sufjan (pronounced Soof-yan) uninitiated, a good place to begin delving into an already astounding body of work for a 31-year-old is his 2005 Illinois album, Come On Feel The Illinoise!. The album is impossible to categorize as mere anti-folk or post-punk, as its various symphonic arrangements and softly sung ballads defy the expectations of most indie rockers. The rollicking train of a song "Chicago" may be the most popular on the album, gaining enough notoriety to be tapped for use in the superb film Little Miss Sunshine. The choice of the song for the film, whose narrative engine is a road trip, should surprise no one, as its melodic and orchestral impulses signify motion toward a destination. For this critic, however, the album's best song is "Casimir Pulaski Day," a heart-wrenching ballad about a friend dying of bone cancer. The song is replete with rich and full characters - the dying girl and shards of the singer's memories of stolen kisses from her, the father whose incomprehension of his daughter's death has made him a veritable ghost. But it is the objects and places - personal and familiar - that resonate so seismically with the listener: Golden Rod ice cream, a 4-H stone, an anonymous hospital room, a Tuesday night Bible study, the floor of a bathroom stall on The Great Divide. Stevens' sincerity, a rarity for so many these days, is without doubt his greatest gift. The song is as much about a reconciliation with an illogical God as it is his friend, as much about the singer making sense of a greater and overwhelming America through the tiny keyhole of a single lyric in a single state.

Sufjan Stevens' music makes anonymous people matter, makes forgotten historical figures suddenly relevant again, makes words count for more than illusionary prisms of style or image. Stevens does not bring "sexy" back - he brings America together over dinner tables, church picnics, funerals, garden shows, softball games. He makes us weep over what we are capable of, smile over what we can do as a nation.