... maybe? Paste Magazine chatted with Sufjan Stevens about his new BQE album, and he touched upon his 50 States project, where he'd once promised to release an album dedicated to each and every state of the union (he's gotten through Illinois and Michigan so far), saying this:
Does this mean it's dead? I'd never really taken it seriously myself but I did keep hoping he'd get around to a New York album so I could hear him talk about the Finger Lakes. Rochester shout-out! Alas. I guess we'll see. For now I just hope he releases any music period - he's been so dismissive of even that lately.
Almost all of his songs from the past couple have been ten minutes long or longer, and I've loved every single second of them, so I'm hopeless as a critic of this man. Hopeless! I'll follow him anywhere. Even through this, which is from the liner notes of The BQE:
Oh indeed!
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“The whole premise was such a joke,” he says now, “and I think maybe I took it too seriously. I started to feel like I was becoming a cliché of myself.”
Does this mean it's dead? I'd never really taken it seriously myself but I did keep hoping he'd get around to a New York album so I could hear him talk about the Finger Lakes. Rochester shout-out! Alas. I guess we'll see. For now I just hope he releases any music period - he's been so dismissive of even that lately.
"“In all honesty, [The BQE] is what really sabotaged my creative momentum. It wasn’t Illinois so much,” he says. “I suffered sort of an existential creative crisis after that piece. I no longer knew what a song was and how to write an album. It overextended me in a way that I couldn’t find my way back to the song.”
“I’m wondering, why do people make albums anymore when we just download? Why are songs like three or four minutes, and why are records 40 minutes long? They’re based on the record, vinyl, the CD, and these forms are antiquated now. So can’t an album be eternity, or can’t it be five minutes?” He pauses. “I no longer really have faith in the album anymore. I no longer have faith in the song.”
Almost all of his songs from the past couple have been ten minutes long or longer, and I've loved every single second of them, so I'm hopeless as a critic of this man. Hopeless! I'll follow him anywhere. Even through this, which is from the liner notes of The BQE:
"And then it hits you: If skyscrapers are the ultimate phallic symbols, then the urban expressway is the ultimate birth canal, the uterine wall, the anatomical passageway, the ultimate means of egress, and the process by which we are all born again. The BQE is the Motherhood of Civilization, the Breast of Being, the fallopian tube, the biological canal from which all of life emerges in resplendent beauty, newborn and newly fashioned with the immaculate countenance of a baby."
Oh indeed!
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2 comments:
I listened to the BQE in its entirety for the first time yesterday and was incredibly impressed with how well it turned out. It feels very... mature, I guess. Even when it's being playful.
I like this talk of playing with album length. A four-hour-long Sufjan Stevens epic would be incredible.
Oh, and yeah: I was looking forward to a New York album, too. A song about Buffalo couldn't've been bad.
I think The BQE's a great piece too, Mike. Did you get to watch the visuals along with it? Completely hypnotic. I got to go to a party for its release the other week and I couldn't take my eyes off of it. But like I said, I'll follow him anywhere so I can't judge this sorta thing. ;-)
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