Usually when people say “I’m an ideas person” it’s code for “I’m a sit on the couch and do lots of drugs person” or “I’m a come in, look through ten years of your company’s accounts, say something gnomic, show you a pie-chart and then charge you a fortune in consultancy fees person.”
That’s not the kind of ‘ideas person’ Sufjan Steven’s is. He has real, bona-fide, untainted by opiates or pie-charts, honest-to-goodness ideas, which he then follows through on like a swot. He’s the kind of ideas person who launches himself into a 52 album sequence of neo-folk, contemporary-classical, choral ruminations on each US state, before abandoning it after two wonderful albums. He’s the type of ideas person who produces Christmas music each year for his friends and family and then compiles it into a very special Christmas box-set. He’s also the sort of person who decides to produce a multi-media concept musical/film/album/comic book about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, 12.7 miles of rather dull urban road in New York, the soundtrack to which I am currently listening to with a pleasantly puzzled expression on my face.
There’s none of Sufjan’s lovely voice on this record because it’s essentially a piece of contemporary classical music which lies somewhere in the nexus between minimalist modernists Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Michael Nyman and more bombastic soundtrackers Danny Elfman and Bernard Herrmann, with occasional moments of electronic madness via Autechre/Sonic The Hedgehog. For those who’re entering this world from the more conventional realms of indie pop it’s an opportunity to see strings, woodwind, brass, percussion and electronica in their natural habitats and for those familiar with the world of contemporary classical music it’s a nice harmonic sign-post pointing the way to that sadly neglected genre.
It’s lovely stuff, essentially, and for those who think that Sufjan is copping out and should be writing songs with words and vocals and choruses, let me note: songwriters are two-a-penny, real life polymathematical ideas people, on the other hand, are rare as hen’s teeth. Let him do whatever the hell he wants.