Last Wednesday, when most students were headed home for Thanksgiving, Michigonian Sufjan Stevens hit the stage at the Black Cat. Stevens makes music you want to listen to cold, so you can feel it warm your soul. It was anything but cold that night, but you take what you can get, I suppose.
There were two opening bands, Awry and Nicolai Dunger. The latter is a Scandinavian soccer star turned acoustic solo artist. The crowd yelled "bo-ring!" before he was done. Poor guy.
But then Sufjan and his band, the Michigan Militia, took the stage with zeal and excitement, ready to cure any ill will produced by the openers. Donning what looked like Boy Scout uniforms with American flag bandanas, they went right into the first song, a clever and catchy little jaunt through all 50 states.
They kept the pace going, burning through songs from all his records, including this year's "Seven Swans" and unreleased tracks (like "Chicago," from the forthcoming album about Illinois). Highlights of the set included "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti," from last year's "Greetings! From Michigan" LP, and "Sister" from Seven Swans, during which Stevens led a nice big sing-along. Stevens also played a super funked-out version of "Super Sexy Woman," a rather unexpected tribute to womanhood from his debut, "A Sun Came." Another high point came midway through the show, when the band did a version of the Star-Spangled Banner. It started slow and delicate, and swelled and grew into a huge, moving, almost menacing refrain.
Stevens was quite candid and talked a lot between songs. He volunteered little anecdotes and explanations of songs. For example, of the song "He Woke Me Up Again," he said, "This song's about being woken up in my bed late at night by my dad. See, my parents were night owls, and they'd stay awake all night discussing things. Like one time, my parents were talking, and at about three in the morning, they came up and woke all us kids up and said, 'We've come to a conclusion. We're not going to celebrate Christmas anymore. It's a social construct.' So that year we didn't do anything for Christmas."ÿIt's those sort of little gems, little personal nuggets, that I long for from a show.
After the last song, Sufjan came on for the (nowadays) compulsory encore. He came on solo, just him and a banjo, and thanked the audience.ÿThen he started arguably the most emotional song from "Greetings from Michigan," "Romulus." You could tell the song is so personal, and this made it incredibly touching.
This was why Stevens is such a marvelous artist. ÿTrue connections with the audience are formed not by rocking out hard, but by revealing yourself as a human being. In his songs and at his shows, Stevens has such honesty and integrity, and is ready to expose his feelings for all to see. James Mercer, front man for the Shins, once said of a Flaming Lips show, "It was like going to the Church of Humanism." Indeed, the same could easily be said for this Sufjan Stevens show.
