You Might Be Upset (I Focus On The Negative)

Pink Moon is a half-hour long with a dozen two- and three-minute tracks, just as God and Buddy Holly intended. Sure, if it's 1972 maybe that means you have to get up more often to flip the LP. But we were just sitting around, so we don't mind. Or maybe we just let our brand-new 8-track loop while cruising through the poetic mist in our Volkswagen.

I have a feeling this is one of those albums that you can only slowly discover. You probably start out thinking the title track and "Know" and "Free Ride" are your favorites, but then after a year of listening you suddenly really LISTEN to "Things Behind the Sun," and you GET it, and you realize it's not just a mash-up of every other song on the disc but in fact is perfectly different. The next year you discover another song or two.

I like it when albums are like this, but the review can't wait that long. On this listen I resonated with songs I know from Way to Blue (I'm fairly unembarrassed here about choosing the post-mortem compilation), and feel that I could really love the others given enough time. They are all ear-catching, but all in pretty much the same way, with chipper guitar and crooning vocals.

Okay, so on to the next one. First of all, let me say that Sufjan Stevens is the 21st Century Man and I have a full-fledged, stuttering, leg-tingling man-crush on him. Did you know he got an MFA in creative fiction? LIKE ME!!! (Okay, actually I dropped out.) Did you know got Rosie Thomas pregnant? I WISH I GOT ROSIE THOMAS PREGNANT!!! (Okay, practical joke fake rumor. Kinda lame, now that I think about it.)

Also I'd like to say that the tour for this album was a really fun show. (I guess most of you were there.) They didn't just play great songs, they put together a real show. And it was beautiful and fun and melancholy and ironic in just the right amounts.

ON THE OTHER HAND. This is not my favorite Sufjan album, and in fact I feel it exemplifies some of the things I hate most about his music. I have been wanting for a long time to vent about it, and now I have the perfect forum. Unlike Eric, I don't care about any of your feelings. It's my time to talk. And if any of you limp-wristed motherfuckers get your feelings hurt, all the better. Go cry into a bunched-up Yo La Tengo T-shirt.

My vitriol is mostly reserved for a single attribute of his music. Here's how he writes a song: He puts together one or two measures of music with creative instrumentation and an unusual chromatic melody and a masterfully-strange-yet-natural time signature. Very cool. But then he repeats those one or two measures for like 15 minutes. Ad nauseum. The accompanying repetitive vocal lines get issued two or three syllables at a time: "Oh God. Of progress. Oh great. Intentions."

Don't know what I'm talking about? Listen to track three (title track). And nine ("Chicago"). And twenty. Or to the entire "Enjoy Your Rabbit" disc.

Probably this the very thing that others of you really like about him. I HOPE YOUR FEELINGS ARE HURT.

Something else that I appreciate but ends up not working for me: The music interludes. I appreciate the effort to make the album work as an ALBUM and not just a collection of songs, but when it comes down to it I feel like un-checking the interludes in iTunes.

I prefer Sufjan's beautiful and sentimental song-writing as in Seven Swans. It's on this album in "Concerning the UFO...", "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", "Casimir Pulaski Day," and "The Predatory Wasp...". The line, "With their cars, summer jobs, Oh my God" still gives me goose bumps.

His theming of albums on Midwestern states seems a bit, uh, grad-school-ish. A product more of creativity than madness. Maybe madness is more authentic. But I identify more with the creativity.

Anyway, Sufjan wins. Nick Drake is a legend of nostalgia. Sufjan I identify with almost completely.