A Devil's Night of Lovesickness and the Apocalypse with Sufjan Stevens

At this time of year, I like to play a game which I've dubbed "Costume or Everyday?" in which I attempt to ascertain whether someone is dressed up for Halloween, or whether they'd be wearing that outfit regardless. Sometimes it is very difficult to tell--like last night's Sufjan Stevens show at the Paramount. I'm not talking about the full house; most of the audience was either firmly in the costume or no costume camp. But you get the feeling that Sufjan would've been wearing swan wings, silvery pants, and glowsticks whatever day of the year. After all, this is the man who on his last tour dressed like a boy scout with multi-colored eagle wings.

But a lot has changed for Sufjan since he was at the Paramount four years ago. His new album, The Age of Adz (and the All Delighted People EP, released just two months prior) is lighter on the finger-picking than Illinois or Michigan. He's traded in the banjo for synths, loops, and effects pedals, and the result is a delirious, cacophonous, overstuffed, charming mess--yes, even with the Autotune. As a whole, The Age of Adz is concerned with heartache and lovesickness (and the subsequent psychological turmoil and existential ennui), all told through the mythology of the apocalypse and accompanied by the artwork of Royal Robertson, a schizophrenic Louisiana folk artist who created visions of aliens, angels, and the end of days. Said Sufjan, "It's a little dramatic, but it pays the bills."

In a set that lasted over two hours, Sufjan and friends played mostly the new stuff, though they kicked things off under a scrim, with an amped-up version of "Seven Swans." His ten-piece band featured two drummers, a horn section, and female backup singers/dancers (if you've seen The BQE you know some of their moves, including ribbon dancing). Sufjan made prodigious use of scrims and lights (some of it looking straight out of Tron), and animation and video collage, employed nowhere better than "Vesuvius," where by the end of the song it looked as if the stage was engulfed by a volcano. And as always, no one has better sound than Sufjan, with a mix that allowed all the instruments to shine through, while also highlighting Sufjan's warm, earnest, delicate voice and easy falsetto. Even his whispers sounded crisp.

And then there was "Impossible Soul." The twenty-five minute album closer/five-part "magnum opus of love and madness" is divisive at best. To some, it contains more ideas than most songwriters have in a lifetime; to others, it's an act of self-indulgent art school wankery, and to be fair, it's probably a little of both. The white-boy dance breakdown (see video above) made me cringe, and I say that as someone who finds Sufjan nearly impossibly endearing--but even I have my limits. Still, the crowd was on its feet from the end of "Impossible Soul" through set closer "Chicago" and then through the rest of the Illinois-heavy encore: "Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois," "Casimir Pulaski Day," Seven Swans' "The Dress Looks Nice on You," and "John Wayne Gacy."  For those final songs, the audience sang along, with fevered, fervent whispers and chants echoing through the crowd. It felt cathartic--and a little like church--which is what you need when it's the end of the world for love.