Sufjan Stevens New Direction
by Timmeh on 2009-10-02Lee's Palace - TorontoRating: 5 out of 5"You Are The Blood", Sufjan Stevens contribution to the momentous Dark Was The Night compilation album earlier this year, a cover of a song by Asthmatic Kitty labelmates Castanets, showed the first signs of Stevens new form which reappeared in its most developed phase last night at Lee's Palace in Toronto. Five unreleased songs appeared last night, three of which (Impossible Souls, Age of Oddz, Too Much Love) never heard before this tour, that explored this new form incorporating synth drum sections, climactic horn movements, and Stevens new approach to the guitar,.something "You Are The Blood" did not prepare us for.
Stevens has developed a style of playing guitar with a whammy pedal and his guitar's dive bar that forces each performance to be something new and exciting. Repeating the same musical phrases is nearly impossible at this point. It became clear by the end of the night what the motivations behind this tour were. In addition to breaking a dry spell of not touring and being forced to relearn old material (the band struggled through complex songs such as Detroit), the question on everyone's mind is: what will become of these new songs? And the answer for Stevens, fortunately, is that he does not know.
All in all the new songs, in addition to the newly reinvented and fantastic All Delighted People, and the classic Majesty Snowbird (the only song which did not improve in this new format) from the "Majesty Snowbird Tour" make up an albums worth of material (around 50 minutes) despite only being five songs. Stevens himself at one point referred to his new material as very "indulgent". Whatever Stevens is working towards, it is not another State-album and does not sound like anything near a complete album.
But the tour could not make more sense. Capturing Stevens in this transitional phase allowed for great moments and interactions with the crowd. At one point in Impossible Souls he asked guest vocal performer Nedelle Torrisi of Cryptacize "what's the next line" and then "oh yeah". On Detroit she briefly continued to repeat the chorus after it ended to everyone's amusement. Casimir Pulaski Day was briefly interrupted by Stevens guitar strap falling off. He assured panicked band members mid-verse that "its okay, i can just hold it". The enthusiastic crowd was rewarded with a two song encore despite the show running late and a nod to his Canadian audience with a cover of The Innocence Mission's The Lakes of Canada.