Sufjan Stevens ∙ The Lord God Bird
Dazu Pitchfork:
So the reason this track exists is this:
Independent radio producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister were curious about how [Sufjan] Stevens writes his songs, which, much like their own work, are filled with stories of places and people. So, they introduced Stevens to the Arkansas town of Brinkley.
Right, like Brinkley, Arkansas, is gonna give Sufjan a hard time. Like the near-extinct species of [u]ivory-billed woodpecker that inhabits Brinkley, a/k/a The Lord God Bird a/k/a Great God Bird (but somehow not a/k/a The Great Clap Your Hands Say Bird), isn’t going to have that particular-in-general, general-in-particular lifeforce oomph Sufjan teases out so expertly, so delicately. Like this guy couldn’t write a song about anything at this point, one seemingly unadorned and unassuming but somehow completely and intimately understanding the subject matter’s struggle against its environment– social marginalization, propensity for evil-doing, or as is here, the other-effects of capitalism and industrialization, both of which slowly encroach upon our world’s collective ass.
Be my guest and try hanging Sufjan for melodrama (a bird’s going extinct, so what, so did the dinosaurs but where’s their song), or the music for motives of forgiveness/grace (Sufjan’s art-brute minor-to-major shorthand in the voxless breakdown) or the time signature for not being 5/4 (it’s not 5/4). Except, guys, the song’s really about everything but that goddamn bird– about everything and everyone responsible for goddamning it. That sublime wordless chorus midway through second-chances us but expects our pathos.
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