....ong titles. I blew past the Blogger post title limit!
Last night, I spent a couple of hours walking up and down Nicollet Mall and Hennepin downtown before the Sufjan Stevens concert. It's a really cool area. It seems like the most conventional of businesses are there (Target, Walgreens, etc), but they did an excellent job of using the existing urban fabric for their buildings, which is not something those businesses tend to do. I know that Target, being headquartered here, has an impetus to look cool and invest in downtown, but I was really impressed with their store that was shoehorned into this odd two-story space. A two-story Target. How about that?
My grey Fedora made its Minneapolis debut last night. While I was walking around, the cutest little girl ever (maybe 6 or 7) said to me "man, you looking' REAL fancy!", and started imitating my walk. It was really the cutest thing I could possibly imagine. The actual amount of my fanciness is a topic up for debate.
The Orpheum Theatre is nothing short of amazing. It was built in the 1920s and very obviously taken care of very carefully. I love old theaters like this, especially for concerts, and this one is in impeccable shape. The acoustics were also excellent.
Once I got in, I wandered around for a while admiring the architecture of the place, ordered a gin and tonic, and took my seat. I was sitting next to the cousin of the girl who I bought the ticket from, and she struck up a conversation. It was nice to talk to a new person who's into the same random stuff I am, but it did make me (once again) realize that I am a terribly awkward conversationalist. These things happen, I suppose. She had just moved to town too, so we talked about getting lost, where we were from, and Asthmatic Kitty records and other artists we liked on that label. It's really the first time I've had a conversation with a random stranger at a show, and it was nice.
The above is deceptive. I was thinking, oh, hey, Sufjan Stevens is touring solo. That's cool. his arrangements are fairly complex, but hey, maybe he's got backing tracks or something. Oh, how wrong I was. This was the setup for the opener, who was a dude with an acoustic guitar whose name escapes me. He played about 4 songs, and that was it. It was a nice opening set, for sure. After a short wait, Sufjan came on, and I realized how wrong I had been about the night's setup.
He had a backing band of ten people, I shit you not. Two singers, two brass players, two drummers, a pianist, another keyboard/sampler guy, a bass guitarist, and a rhythm guitarist. All those instruments that show up on his arrangements? Played live, by real people. It's sad that I have to point out and be impressed by this fact, but there you have it. Also, and this is a weird thing to point out, but the sound mix at this show was amazing. There were 11 musicians on stage, and no one ever clobbered the other in the mix. Everything was crisp and nice and audible. It honestly sounded like a studio mix or something, but it was being performed live in front of me. Along those lines, Sufjan's vocals were crystal clear, and not muddied in the mix or anything. It was really important to get this right, and they nailed it. Sufjan is one of those vocalists where you have to be able to take the nuances of his performance to really appreciate it, and in this regard, this show knocked it out of the park.
Most of the show's set came from his new album, The Age of Adz, and the accompanying EP, All Delighted People. I hadn't had much exposure to this material yet, but it blew me away. He has (re-)introduced a lot of interesting skronky electronics to his music, and you know I eat that shit up, so it was totally great. The set was very light on Illinois material (just Chicago and Casimir Pulaski Day), and there was nothing at all from Michigan. He did open with a song from Seven Swans, though, which was great. It was a talky set. Who'd have thought that Sufjan would like to yammer on a bit, given song titles like "The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'"? (editors note: that song is a whopping two minutes long)
It was mostly banter, but one of his longer conversational interludes was a discussion about Royal Robertson, an outsider artist who inspired The Age of Adz's artwork, much of its material, and most of the visuals for the show. I guess he was a schizophrenic who perceived all of these apocalyptic events unfolding around him, and turned them into art. He had a huge, loving family, and he eventually kicked them out of his life and lived in a tiny trailer making this art for decades, hardly seeing anyone the entire time. It's kind of an amazing tragic story, and his work is really interesting as well. I hadn't heard of him before this, and I'm intrigued to look into his work further. I'm very curious about outsider art and music, so it was great to learn a little something aligned with my interests in between instances of face-rocking. Some of his work can be found here.
Sufjan Stevens and company played for about three hours total, including encore. It was really a great show, probably among my top five ever. Anyway, I've gone on about this long enough, don't you think?
