review: Sufjan Stevens|Strike

Town Hall|55 Bar, 29 September 2006

(note: MP3's from this show: here courtesy of Ryspace)

(photo from the show courtesy of sarahana, via Brooklyn Vegan)

OK, let's just start right off with the wings. There were at least 15 pairs of them, one for each of the musicians in the band; everyone wearing brightly colored butterfly wings (and sometimes matching masks or hats or thingamabobs) except their leader, Sufjan Stevens, who wore a wide set of technicolored bird wings which flapped themselves when he swayed just so, playing the guitar or banjo or even sitting at the piano for that matter. I call Stevens their "leader" because beyond the matching wings, the entire band wore matching grey two-piece outfits that bordered between asylum wear and cult-chic. The outfits had a stripe of color, maybe you'd call it a racing stripe, which was red for everyone except for Stevens, which was yellow. The band wore wings.

In essence, that's all you really need to know about the show. I could accept the wings on first sight, I really dig the music and wanted to see what it all meant tied together with wings in a live
setting. Many probably cannot and I can accept that, too. But what of that music? Well, let's use metaphor here, metaphor being one of the tricks of the writing-about-music trade and let me say that Sufjan's music is like a pair of wings. It's light and actually delicate, but somehow, someway they *do* fly... well most wings fly, let's discount the penguins and emus for now. And the music Friday night that described the music quite well, it's feathery and soft and fragile and yet it has some strength and flaps about and manages to soar every so often.

There is no denying that Stevens is a songwriter of the 1st degree. He just flat out writes good songs and one of the good things about them is that they don't sound like anyone else. Sure, there are influences and the band, nearly a score of musicians, is like part string ensemble, part brass band, part acoustic pop trio and part rock and roll hit. But this all rolls together in an incredibly unique way -- Sufjan Stevens can be lumped with this sub-sub-genre or that one,
but there really isn't anyone doing what he's doing to the level he's doing it, and there's something to be said for that. The next step is to harnass that creative edge into a live show. Yes, the show was a good one, heck, maybe even a great one, but it lacked a certain oomph
that I thought might exist in the material.

So there's some power and there's a lot of vulnerability and so there is some sort of self-contradictory nature and that is Sufjan Stevens. There is no denying the self-importance of the music, between the wings and the serious nature of the songs and the big string section,
etc. And yet, I found a certain goofy, boyish good humor in the whole affair. No doubt there was a touch of tounge in that Sufjan cheek when he told his band to put those wings on. Sure there was some hipster irony when his stagehands through out 20 inflatable Superman
dolls during "The man of Metropolis steals our hearts" (off of "Illinois," about an actual town in Illinois that is obsessed with Superman), or repeating the trick with Santa Claus dolls during "The worst Christmas ever" off his upcoming set of Xmas music, but it *was* pretty funny in a make-you-smile kind of way. His anecdotes between some songs carry on this sense that while he takes the music maybe WAY too seriously, he doesn't necessarily feel that way about himself.

The contradictions abound. Even though there is such a large band and the music is filled with orchestral underpinnings, I realized last night that these are *small* songs. This is not necessarily bad. They have the power to soar, and yet maybe they are caged birds. This
is iPod music that strives to exist between the ears only and not necessarily flutter about in the big open spaces of a live show. Sufjan sings about a wide range of topics from the very broad big
ideas encompassed in cities like Detroit to personal tales of friendship, love, etc. to bible stories. And yet he can sing about a touching childhood anecdote with a cool detachment and make the whole city of Chicago feel like a very intimate experience. It was nice that he didn't stick to just one or two albums. Yeah, there was a heavy dose of "Illinois," but "Michigan" was represented and other albums, his upcoming Christmas record and even some quote-unquote "brand new" material.

There is a certain Chinese food quality of the music, like you don't long for it specifically, you enjoy the heck out of it immensely while digesting it in the present tense, and once it's gone it leaves little mark. In fact you may be quite hungry for a little something more shortly thereafter (see below). In short (HA HA!), the show was good, it didn't meet a certain level of majestic "happening" that you might expect, I'd go see him again, just not tonight.

A quick word about the opener, My Brightest Diamond, which was essentially a good half of Sufjan's ensemble (strings, guitar, drums, vocals) lead by his right-hand-lady, Shara Worden. There is actually so much I want to say about this set and almost all of it is bad, so in the vein of "...don't say it all" I should probably bite my lip. But I can't resist remarking on perhaps the most ill-advised cover I've seen in a while -- Bill Withers' "Use Me" -- maybe the whitest
version of a song you've ever heard. Amazing how the same musicians who performed quite admirably in the following set were so amazingly ugh under Worden's direction.

My chicken lo mein eaten and enjoyed, I let the train decide whether I would take an apertif and when the 1 arrived, I took the local down to the Village and the 55 Bar for some more of the goods. Now THIS is what I'm talking about. This was what live music in New York City is all about to me. It may not be the best club in the universe, but if you were coming to NYC and wanted to just randomly drop in on a venue for some music -- there is no place you should go except 55 Christopher. First of all, it is almost 100% local musicians and it is almost 100% top notch talent. I've been there mostly to see Wayne Krantz's Thursday gigs, but every time I've been there I've had a quintessential live music experience.

Friday night was an ensemble calling itself "Strike" -- Bobby Previte, Marco Benevento and Briggan Krauss. I arrived at 11:30ish for the midnight set. There were about 10 people in the room. The clock on the wall said 11:50, a good 15 minutes fast. The band started early because it felt ready to go. It was perfect. Perfect. Once the music started, I had immediate flashbacks to the early days of the Benevento/Russo Duo at the Tap Bar, free every Thursday. When I first
started going, it was always *after* another show and it was always empty and it always blew me away. The music started, I immersed myself in a Maker's OTR and the music and a couple minutes later I look up and there's the friend who I used to meet at the Tap Bar all those Thursdays (who isn't even living in the city at the moment). It was one of those freaky WTF's that life throws at you with the slyest of smiles.

Anyway, the music. Oh man, so very very intensely wonderful. It was pure improv, total "Tower of Babel makes sweet music" level stuff. Marco played exclusively on the electric piano (I forget, does he have a Rhodes or a Wurli or what?). Previte on drums. Krauss on alto sax.
It was like chaos theory, one of them was a butterfly flapping its wings in China and it affected the other two in deep profound ways, but not always in perceptible ones. Dark, funky, out there, it was late night heaven. Marco has a level of chemistry and communication with Bobby Previte that is developing at the same rate as he had with Joe Russo. Previte was a hummingbird of activity, constantly fluttering, hovering, quick darts here and there. Krauss layered on the top with a tasteful set of squeaks and squonks -- it was free form stuff of the most enjoyable type. Marco played low and deep and his left hand rivalled the best bass players out there. There were few solos and that wasn't what this was about, but Marco played, flat out, the best unaccompanied solo I've heard in this calendar year, a heaping spoonful of gorgeous groove.

After the set -- a pretty much non-stop 50 minutes of straight unrehearsed interplay the 10 or so of us sighed happily in unison. Marco came up to me and was like "like the Tap Bar, right?" Took the words right out of my mouth. There's a certain magic in that room, no doubt.

Postscript: So, I assume it's OK to start spreading this, but Marco also told me that Wednesdays in November he'll be doing a residency at Tonic which is another one of the great, great rooms in the city. The residency will be different every week and I don't remember all of
them (neither did he, exactly... there are 5 Wednesdays this November, by the way), but the first one is a duo with Mike Gordon doing a Benny Goodman (?) set. One week will be entirely solo, one will be a quartet with 3 drummers (!), which I forget. They all sounded delicious, to tell you the truth and he seemed very psyched about it. Should be a nice fall!