Sufjan Stevens concert
My life is pretty boring usually, but tonight I have something to actually update about.
I found out shortly after I got here that Sufjan Stevens would be playing at this ex-church-now-bar/venue/performance space called Oran Mor. However, I was a little worried, as Oran Mor had absolutely no advertisements for the show that I could see, so I wondered if it wasn't cancelled or something else bad and generally unfavorable.
Fortunately, Scots are apparently just really inefficient marketers, and there was indeed a show.
This was apparently the first date of the European tour, so Sufjan and his Illinoisemakers weren't exactly on the same page all the time. Worse, the sound people seemed like they may have never heard Illinois before.
However, it was Sufjan fucking Stevens. It was a great show.
I haven't seen Sufjan in concert before, so I'm not sure if the little ditty they opened with--a catalogueing of the 50 states--is typical--it seems like it might be if he's serious about this whole one album for every state thing (Indiana's going to get robbed of one, I just know it--he'll get tired or die before he picks the Hoosier State).
Next was an a capella (not very good) version of Prairie Fire that Wanders About, then The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders, then Come On! Feel the Illinoise! and then, getting the crowd really into it, Jacksonville, which got the biggest reaction of the night. "Andrew Jackson, all I'm askin'..." The rest of the set as best as I can remember it: Decatur, John Wayne Gacy, Casimir Pulaski Day, Chicago, Night Zombies, Predatory Wasp, and Man of Metropolis. The encore was To Be Alone with You.
Sufjan and the band were dressed up as cheerleaders for University of Illinois and did amusing cheers for the towns of Jacksonville, Decatur, and Metropolis. They also had (somewhat) coordinated little cheerleading moves that they performed as interludes within some of the songs.
The trumpet player was amazing and the trombonist (?) very competent, but the drummer was a little too loud. Sufjan mostly played acoustic throughout. I think there was a bassist/banjoist and then a guitarist. I couldn't see very well--I was in a position to see Sufjan and the trumpeter, but virtually no one or anything else.
I found out shortly after I got here that Sufjan Stevens would be playing at this ex-church-now-bar/venue/performance space called Oran Mor. However, I was a little worried, as Oran Mor had absolutely no advertisements for the show that I could see, so I wondered if it wasn't cancelled or something else bad and generally unfavorable.
Fortunately, Scots are apparently just really inefficient marketers, and there was indeed a show.
This was apparently the first date of the European tour, so Sufjan and his Illinoisemakers weren't exactly on the same page all the time. Worse, the sound people seemed like they may have never heard Illinois before.
However, it was Sufjan fucking Stevens. It was a great show.
I haven't seen Sufjan in concert before, so I'm not sure if the little ditty they opened with--a catalogueing of the 50 states--is typical--it seems like it might be if he's serious about this whole one album for every state thing (Indiana's going to get robbed of one, I just know it--he'll get tired or die before he picks the Hoosier State).
Next was an a capella (not very good) version of Prairie Fire that Wanders About, then The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders, then Come On! Feel the Illinoise! and then, getting the crowd really into it, Jacksonville, which got the biggest reaction of the night. "Andrew Jackson, all I'm askin'..." The rest of the set as best as I can remember it: Decatur, John Wayne Gacy, Casimir Pulaski Day, Chicago, Night Zombies, Predatory Wasp, and Man of Metropolis. The encore was To Be Alone with You.
Sufjan and the band were dressed up as cheerleaders for University of Illinois and did amusing cheers for the towns of Jacksonville, Decatur, and Metropolis. They also had (somewhat) coordinated little cheerleading moves that they performed as interludes within some of the songs.
The trumpet player was amazing and the trombonist (?) very competent, but the drummer was a little too loud. Sufjan mostly played acoustic throughout. I think there was a bassist/banjoist and then a guitarist. I couldn't see very well--I was in a position to see Sufjan and the trumpeter, but virtually no one or anything else.