TAS Live Review: Sufjan Stevens At The Beacon Theatre, November 14

Sufjan Stevens' show on November 14 was not at all what I expected. I'd come to know his endearing, humorous folk music through Illinois, with an added level of joy as it covers little-known aspects of my home state. His clever and often-spontaneous orchestrations made me imagine him as the kind of performer who might stand on stage and offer simply his music to speak for itself.

Instead, his performance at New York's resplendent Beacon Theater was a most grandiose, most delightful spectacle, and possibly one of the best shows I have ever seen.

Perhaps I'm stretching it a little to say that the scrim hanging over the stage (on which they would later project swirling images) represents Sufjan's own shrouded, mysterious persona. To him, it seemed natural to fill the empty downstage with beach balls to spell "SUF." It also made sense to describe the ensuing show as "Avatar meets Cats on Ice."

He emerged first to play "Seven Swans" on solo banjo; a pair of angel wings hung lopsided off his back. It was perhaps to appease the diehard fans of the Sufjan folk era, which is now effectively over. He warned us that the show would consist largely of new material, as he's become less interested in songwriting and more interested in sounds: the way they are put together, the way they are created and the way they tell stories themselves. This is why he has come to love electronic music.

The performance was complete with costume changes, backup dancers, a pair of synchronous drummers and a horn section consisting of three trombones. Sufjan's own dancing -- almost Tai Chi, almost The Robot -- felt like the kind of showmanship he had always hoped to perform, but had been previously locked into the mold of his folk straightforwardness. Now, with this added level of hip-hop and an element of surprise, he is free to launch into a dance number and doesn't have to be joking.

We, the faithful audience, were awarded small glimpses into the artist's psyche by watching him perform pieces that clearly were very meaningful to him. In the "Age of Adz," he sings, "I'm sorry if I seem self-effacing / Consumed by selfish thoughts / It's only that I still love you deeply / It's all the love I've got" and I wonder what kind of person he could be in love with. Or, we find his oft-questioned religiousness with lines like "get real / get right / with the Lord" in an ode to the album's inspirational artist, the self-proclaimed prophet and alleged schizophrenic Royal Robertson.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOYkuItejKQ]

The 25-minute suite "Impossible Soul" is a "psychotherapeutic" experience for he and his band to perform, and he included us in that journey. By the time the (4th? 5th?) movement came around, after the auto-tune, after a giant diamond set piece descended, everyone got up out of their seats to sing: "It's a long life/ Better pinch yourself/ Put your face together/ Better get it right."

It was the cathartic moment, as if we all experiencing the psychological breakthrough and newfound dance moves his band does every time they play this song.

The show wasn't even close to over yet. Sufjan went to the piano and plunked out the familiar opening riff of "Chicago" and suddenly, colorful balloons of all sizes were raining down from the ceiling, and the audience (myself included) devolved into giggling children, chanting "All things go, all things go" in an overall sense of euphoria.

He finished the set with some subdued and classics in his songbook which seemed to bring everyone down from our ecstatic heights to introspection, in the spirit of the therapy that he had promised. It was hard to hear whether people were singing along with "Casimir Pulaski Day," because everyone was whispering the lyrics under their breath, perhaps afraid to overpower the delicate memorial. I still cannot put my finger on who on earth Sufjan Stevens might be. He makes amazing music that attempts to communicate complex emotions. He is someone who is keyed into his own jokes more than we can ever hope to be (why did he keep smirking that the show was sponsored by Coca Cola?).

But it would be no fun if we had all the answers, would it? In the end, the stage is his spaceship and we are left only to speculate why.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXMPBshe6_M]

Setlist:

Seven Swans
Too Much
Age of Adz
Heirloom
I Walked
Futile Devices
Vesuvius
Now That I'm Older
Get Real Get Right
Enchanting Ghost
Impossible Soul
Chicago

Encore:
Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, IL
Casimir Pulaski Day
To Be Alone With You
John Wayne Gacy Jr.