Sufjan Stevens Preaches Love at Genre-Bending Chicago Show

Posted on Oct 16th 2010 10:00AM by Garin Pirnia
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During his two-hour performance at Chicago Theatre Friday night, Sufjan Stevens and his orchestra touched upon majestic ballads, melancholic folk, jazz, new age and even ventured into hip-hop when he sampled Salt N Pepa on an unexpected dance segment.

Stevens' set was predominantly comprised of songs from his newest works 'Age of Adz' and the 'All Delighted People' EP, but he also dipped into a few from his groundbreaking record 'Illinoise' at the end of the night. For the opening number, Stevens stood onstage, plucked his banjo and sang 'Seven Swans' as mind-bending Carl Sagan-esque images floated on a screen draped behind him and another transparent screen emanated 3D effects in front of him. Once the screen raised, a full orchestra of two drummers, two backup singers dressed in futuristic garb and a horn section married lilting melodies and cacophonous rhythms.

Stevens explained to the audience his new record was about "the interior lives of love and loss and the cosmos within us," but the main theme was love. With that sentiment, he played the glitchy 'Too Much' against sped-up images of himself dancing and shouts of "I want to have your babies" from the crowd. Midway through, Stevens gave a monologue on outsider artist Royal Robertson whose artwork appears on the 'Age of Adz' cover. Stevens said Robertson was a schizophrenic who painted thousands of paintings about space, prophecies and aliens, and that Robertson inspired him to return to a more primitive style of writing. "You're probably confused and bewildered why there's no banjo in [the album]," he joked to the audience, but later when Stevens re-appeared with a banjo, the crowd cheered in relief.

After tinkling the ivories on 'Now That I'm Older' and playing the lachrymose 'The Owl and the Tanager,' Stevens arrived at the core of his show: the heartbreaking work of staggering genius that was 'Impossible Soul.' In the span of 25 minutes, the song morphed from electro-pop to dance funk, then transformed into a folk song at the end. One of the dancers donned sunglasses and neon pink shorts and danced behind a big diamond piece of scenery while Stevens' vocals altered into auto-tune, brief samples of Salt N Pepa's 'Push It' played and the audience rejoiced in the aisles until security broke up the dancing.

Stevens ended the regular set on the apropos 'Chicago,' which received tremendous applause when he referred to Chicago as "the city of my dreams and the place I use to run away to when I was a kid, but now the running away comes with a hotel and catering. This song is for you." Stevens and his musicians came back for a four-song encore including the rarely performed 'Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!' and the beautiful 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr.' Once the song finished, the crowd from the city and state Stevens so lovingly wrote about rewarded him with a much-deserved standing ovation.

Watch Stevens' performance of 'Impossible Soul' at last night's gig below.