"Chicago" in Chicago: Sufjan Stevens on the Carrie & Lowell Tour on my Birthday

"I fell in love again/All things go, all things go/Drove to Chicago/All things know, all things know..."

Every so often, some cosmic coincidences converge in your favor.  I had one yesterday, when--on my birthday no less--Sufjan Stevens came to Chicago and performed "Chicago" in Chicago.  It rarely gets more serendipitous than that.

So my lover and I fell in love again (all things go, all things go) and drove to Chicago (all things know, all things know).  I could not have better planned something that was gifted me by the Universe.

Yet even on the drive up from Iowa City, we ebbed with a quiet current of anxiety--simply put, what if he sucked?  Illinois and his mid-'00s zenith are now officially a decade old.  He's pushing 40 (official legacy-act age).  The album-a-year clip he maintained in his youth has now slowed to once every 5 years.  Was this once uber-prolific Indie-darling now slowing down, showing his years?

Also was the little matter of Carrie and Lowell, Mr. Stevens' new album that processes the recent death of his mother, with whom he's had a highly fraught relationship ever since she abandoned her young family in a bout of schizophrenia.  The melodies are gorgeous, the arrangements exquisite, and the lyrics free from even the barest hint of schmaltzy sentimentality that could cheapen the grief.  The reviews have been nothing short of rave.

Yet even as I listened to my pre-ordered copy every single day this month in prep for the concert, I had to confess--this was not vintage Stevens.  Clocking in at a mere 42 minutes, it is by far his shortest album proper since 2004's Seven Swans--which was itself just a quick breather between his sprawling epics Michigan and Illinois (back when we all thought he just might be serious about recording an album for all 50 states).  The fact that it took 3 years to get around to releasing this little quickie did not bespeak encouragingly for his latter-day output.

Carrie and Lowell is also an about-face from his last disc, the wild electronica experiments of 2010's The Age of Adz.  The stripped down, bare acoustic Carrie and Lowell is just the sort of so-called "back-to-basics" album that typically signals less a resurgence than a retreat and resignation--a sign that an artists' best days are behind them.

So deep down, I quietly feared: I got into Sufjan late; had I missed the Sufjan Stevens boat?  Were the orchestral productions of the Illinois tour and the multi-media events of The Age of Adz a thing of the past now?  Were we just on our way to some quiet acoustic show, a sort of glorified coffee-house corner performance by an aging singer settling into irrelevance? 

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Wonderfully, gloriously no.

Longest answer: I was completely wrong about Carrie and Lowell. 

We all were.  There is nothing "stripped-down" or "back-to-basics" but about this disc whatsoever--it is as expansive and ambitious as anything he's ever done.  The ambient sounds that flank and flesh out the songs are not extraneous production effects or studio afterthoughts, no--they are crucial to the album's ethos, possibly even central.  For performing live, Stevens takes these ambient sounds and foregrounds them across the canvas of the theater with an accompanying light show that opens up the album to you in a manner you had never before contemplated; as Paul to the Corinthians, that which you had not been told you will you consider. 

Hanging above him and his backing band were a series of elongated hexagonal TV screens, set up like church windows, revealing even as they concealed, like religious faith.  Throughout the show, these screens silently broadcast haunting home-videos of childhood summers with his Mom in Eugene; breath-taking vistas of the Oregon coast; soft glows and abstract images, whatever the song called for.  The projections did in fact make the theater feel like a place of worship.

Does he have a far smaller backing-band now?  He doesn't need a bigger one anymore--he's now as wide and irreducible as Oregon (in a sense, he really did continue his 50 states project--Carrie and Lowell is the Oregon album).

Is a quiet acoustic album an awkward fit for a multi-media production?  Maybe, but Carrie and Lowell, again, isn't just some acoustic album.  When he sings in mantric repetition "We're all gonna die" at the end of "Fourth of July," the stage-lights sweep across the audience, reminding us individually and communally of the same.  And then there's the fade-out ambiance that closes out the album on "Blue Bucket of Gold"--on an ipod, all it signals to me is that it's time to start scrolling for the next album.

But Sufjan is wiser--and live, he does not permit the ambiance to fade out, but instead increases it, improvs on it, opens it up, unfolds it, makes a religious rave of it, reveals the power and the passion that was compressed within the ambience all along.  Here, the whisper becomes a scream; here, the bassist and drummer that were never present on the album break-out in wild ecstasy, as the disco-balls fill the hall with darkness and light, and you feel the majestic album closer in your body, you feel it in your soul, you are filled up.  This was how he finished the main set and sent the audience storming to its feet in thunderous applause.

This is not an effect that some young up-and-comer or aspiring artist can pull off, but only that which a consummate performer, an experienced artist at the height of his powers, knows how to do.  The day may still come when Sufjan Stevens announces his retreat from ambition, when he ceases to grow in his powers, but Carrie and Lowell, blessedly, ain't it.  William Gaddis wrote that every great work of art feels like it needed to exist, and this, this, feels like it needed to exist.

It was so fulfilling, so relieving, not just to merely know that Sufjan Stevens doesn't suck live, but that such beauty and sublimity can still be created in this world--that in our overproduced age where the record is almost always better than the performer, that such live experiences are still possible.  It was a religious experience, and I will never listen to Carrie and Lowell the same way again.

These concert tickets were my girlfriend's birthday present to me--but she thought she had bought the cheap tickets up in the balconies.  Imagine our surprise then when the ushers then took us near the front rows!  The Universe was intent on having me have a happy birthday.  I also had no idea that the Chicago Theater possessed some of the most gorgeous architecture this side of France--it was a delight just to look up and around, even before the opening act came on (Little Scream, whose coming album I'll have to check out later this year--I was briefly concerned that she would overshadow Sufjan!).

So unversed are we in the ways of Chicago, that we didn't even realize that this was the same Theater that we took photos in front of a year ago, when we first touristed-up Chi-town one freezing February--checking-off the Sears Tower, the Bean, the Art Institute, etc.  There was a pleasing sense of synchronicity and symmetry to us returning to this same theater once more without even meaning to, as though we were coming full circle.

Oh, and perhaps you might think that this show description is a sort of back-handed compliment to Sufjan's music--that he needs these multi-media installations to disguise what must be, after all, rather mediocre and sleepy songs.  I will have you know, then, that when he and his band came out for the encore, that there were no more light shows, nor TV screens, just some standard stage lights and some instruments, and he still had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand.

And the only louder applause he got than the end of "Blue Bucket of Gold" was when, with only basic instrumentation and standard lighting and while having the trumpeter also cover the strings on some crappy synthesizer, he finished the encore with "Chicago."  The place went wild.  And again (and I can't emphasize this enough), he performed it in Chicago!  The evening could not have ended more perfectly.  Happy Birthday to me.

And if you haven't given Carrie and Lowell a listen yet, then I don't know why you won't let yourself have nice things.