Sufjan Stevens: All Delighted People EP (2010)

(Asthmatic Kitty)

RECOMMENDED (purchase online-only here)

Less than two weeks ago, Sufjan Stevens remained in the limbo that's been his home since the ecstatic reaction given to Illinois[e] in 2005; still no new pop material could be verified, continuing the silence of these five years that's been broken only by an outtakes album, an orchestral experiment, and several one-offs. But then suddenly and with no prior announcement, last week, Stevens put this EP up for sale digitally. It was ready for download immediately, eclipsing even the tiny lead time Radiohead allowed for In Rainbows in '07. Speculation mounted immediately about what such an unorthodox approach to distribution and promotion means in the context of Sufjan's career and the perilous industry at large. Is putting up an hour of new music for $5 the wave of the pop music future? Was the quiet, underhanded out-of-nowhere nature of the announcement an antidote to hype and leaks, or simply a comment on the unusual and/or uncommercial nature of the record?

When Sufjan, days later, signaled the coming of a new studio album, the position of All Delighted People in his catalog began more clearly to fall into place, particularly with the caveat that said album, The Age of Adz, will have nothing to do with the songs or sound of this EP. We may have to wait until we hear Adz to know if this runoff EP amounts of leftover or discarded ideas from the larger record, or just a Mt. Vernon and Fairway-style supplement, an altogether separate but simultaneous entity. In contrast to Vernon, though, much of People's strangeness derives from the coldest facts and measurements of its existence.

What's so strange about Sufjan releasing an EP? Nothing, really, disregarding the suddenness of its appearance, nor is it weird that there is no immediately available physical counterpart... but this is an oddity in every other sense, beginning with its length. The record stretches every definition of "EP" I can recall in my years of consciousness that such a format existed. At 59:15, it is longer than seven of my ten favorite albums so far in 2010; this will require it to be stretched across two records for its vinyl release late this year, making it surely the first double-LP EP ever. (The Beatles' UK EP Magical Mystery Tour was a two-record set, but they were seven-inches.) Its number of tracks, eight, is hardly modest either; the EP average is, what, five? And a number of classic albums (Marquee Moon, Horses, Remain in Light) contained eight songs. And oh yes, some of the music is also pretty fucking weird.

If you've followed Stevens' career carefully enough, you know better than to expect complacency; if the oddball genius of something like The BQE wasn't a convincer, maybe last year's left-field "You Are the Blood" (from the charity compilation Dark Was the Night) got the point across. Still, one can't help but be taken aback by this EP's title track, presented here in two versions (one eight minutes, one twelve) best described as a violent rollercoaster of sweetness and caterwauling, sounding a bit like a typical cut from Michigan or Seven Swans placed in a garbage disposal for a few seconds before the hapless dishwashing househusband realizes his error and removes the mangled mess from the blades. It's kind of wonderful, kind of irritating, all the way eccentric, replete with liberal Paul Simon quotes and a taste for the epic. Never one for the overblown tendencies of puffier rock music, I admit I'm impressed but doubt I'll be listening often to either the "original" version or the bafflingly titled "classic rock" version.

Half a decade past the peak of his awestruck college-rock acclaim, Stevens counters the inevitability of diminishing returns caused by his lengthy absence with much that sounds as disarmingly New as Illinoise did at the time, not always in such immediate ways. Sounding slightly like a forgotten rejected tune from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, "Owl and the Tanager" is measured, dramatic minimalism, the falsetto and trickery classic Sufjan, the whimsy somehow a different angle. And "From the Mouth of Gabriel" offers operatic baroque pop with a new electro-bounce in its flourishes. Shedding all but the essentials of his melody, the hushed, confident "Arnika" -- the simplest song here -- proves that at its barest, the magic lives; outside of Joanna Newsom, no one wrings so much casual, ornate beauty out of so modest a sound.

But if it's genuinely new territory the listener seeks (which may or may not be the idea; after all, couldn't the EP be designed to stave off protests about a potentially ever more radical full-length?), "Djohariah" delivers. The record's grand finale runs seventeen minutes (longer, for those keeping score, than any of the three much-whined-about closing tracks on Yo La Tengo's Popular Songs of last year), the first nine of which consist of a genuinely disorienting, creepy choral chant behind Sufjan shredding away amateurishly on an electric guitar, wringing sounds from it that are several leagues below Dave Davies but certainly possess comparable goals, if not more apocalyptic ones -- the feeling of mounting chaos from the never-obsolete "Revolution 9" makes a cameo, unnerving and eerily close. When he finally begins to sing, the track becomes only marginally less surreal and disturbing. It's welcome news that Stevens plans to compress his eclecticism and thus challenge his kinder gentler listeners more; all the same, conflicted feelings about this particular execution are difficult to escape. I can't help loving the idea of a lengthy atonal guitar solo, especially on a Sufjan record, but something feels too studied, overwrought about this one, and it does become pretty insufferable and rambling before the halfway point. But no self-respecting fan of the feedback-laden dirge can deny a (nostalgic?) giddiness at the audaciousness of this track. And strangely enough, it's quite catchy.

Maybe, though, for all its detours and indulgences, All Delighted People serves its highest purpose as a kind of reassurance. Those of us who follow great pop music have been waiting for a new song-based Sufjan release for so long we forgot we were waiting for it. Before the crescendo, here's a tiny announcement that our guy is still out there banging away and putting new shit together, only with this particular artist, of course, nothing is ever really tiny, so even his EP has epic pretensions. How could it really be him otherwise? No matter, the net effect is a hit: this is reassuring -- he's still thinking, still preoccupied, still wondering, still our eccentric weirdo, still "just like us" (but so much better).

Did you forget he's a master? One of our brightest lights? You don't even have to pull out your well-worn copies of Illinoise (one of the last physical CDs a lot of us probably bought) and Michigan to bring this back into your fickle consciousness. The moment when I realized the magnitude of Sufjan's return, and how thrilled I am that he's back, was on track number two here, "Enchanting Ghost," ironically one of the two most explicit callbacks back here to Stevens' most famous compositions. That's irrelevant because here it is: the lyrical wisdom and elegant melodies, guitars, candycoated pastoral little soundscapes, strange buried rhythmic suggestions. Oh, but even better: the haunting "Heirloom," here the revival of his folky celebrations of pure gorgeousness that seem to make all other music cease to exist for a few minutes, blissfully drowning in lovely tracked vocals. This noise will never grow too old. Right then, all those qualms and suspicions and mixed feelings about the more overblown moments here (which have their obvious excitment, application, virtue) go away and I can only say: come right on, October 12.