As I’ve mentioned previously, Carrie & Lowell is not my favorite Sufjan Stevens album. So I went to the Paramount last night wondering if I would see any trace of the artist who created The Age of Adz. I was curious to know if the butterfly-wing wearing, choreographed dance routine, neon-painted stage theatrics would still exist. I wanted to know if a live performance might change my thoughts about the latest album.
Fellow Asthmatic Kitty labelmate Roberto Carlos Lange (playing under the moniker Helado Negro) opened for Stevens, by leading two dancers—dressed head to foot in coats of glittering tinsel that made them look like large, eyeless Muppets—onto the stage. Multicolored lights flashed throughout the set as Lange switched between Spanish and English, singing of positive energy, dreams, and the hazy reliability of memory. Later in the night, Stevens would thank him for opening and say, “[Helado Negro] is the house band at the Star Trek Enterprise.” It’s an accurate description.
Stevens himself kicked off the night at the piano, opening with “Death with Dignity” and following it with nine more tracks off Carrie & Lowell. However, traces and flourishes of The Age of Adz Sufjan are still present; he busted out a few dance grooves on “All of Me Wants All of You” and gave it an echoing analog beat; “Carrie & Lowell” bled into a distorted keyboard solo; one of the band members stepped up to play (what I believe was) a Stylophone Retro Pocket Synth at the end of “Futile Devices”; and scattered electronic bubblings were sprinkled throughout “Fourth of July.” At one point, during the later song, I looked around the packed theater as Stevens repeated, “We’re all gonna die,” and wondered why all of us in attendance were so drawn to such bleak subject matter. Stevens addressed this later on in the set, once he was finished with “The Owl and the Tanager” and took the hat out of his back pocket.
He thanked us for being patient with him and said, “Suffering is never meaningless. Once you believe that, you believe a lie and sink into misery and despair… I’m able to perform [my suffering] and release it and give it away. That’s how we endure as a community.”
At one point, my fellow concert-goer turned to me after the absolute gut punch of “The Only Thing” and asked, “Was [Carrie & Lowell] this dramatic?” And I understood what he meant. None of the tracks had affected me as much in private as they did during the live performance. I could only think to respond, “It’s because you can see his face and you understand this isn’t just a story.” Stevens is still grieving the loss of his mother, Carrie, who passed away in 2012, and its evidence changes your experience of the songs. You’re not removed from the narrative when someone else’s sadness is standing in front of you, home videos of their family rolling on a 20-foot backdrop.
My biggest surprise of the night was my own reaction to “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us,” which was not even a song I’d hoped to hear. But when I recognized the opening notes, I started to cry. I had never heard it live and I’d listened to it a great deal after the unexpected death of a friend several years ago. I’d forgotten what a comfort it was to me during that time period. Stevens engages his audience with grief, an emotion associated with such intense privacy and great discomfort, that we often choose not to express it. We go to these shows to make our sadness a more collective experience. And then hopefully, as Stevens said, release some of it.
But this is not to say that the night was without a sense of humor. Stevens got a chuckle during “Eugene” when he sang of the swim instructor who pronounced his name “Subaru.” When he finally got around to talking, he asked us to remember the positive moments of our childhood—”the standing ovation you got for playing chopsticks at the piano recital in second grade”—and call upon them in moments of need and depression, like “when you find out you have Lyme disease, or whatever.” Then he went on to describe the plot of the straight-to-video cheerleading sequel Bring It On Again in great detail, laughing, and called it “A beautiful manifestation of humanity, the potential of humanity. We should hire a cheering squad for postpartum depression. For heart surgery. Or maybe I stop talking and play the next song.”
For my part, I’ll try to remember the small details of last night. The way Stevens wiped sweat off his face after playing “Eugene.” When he dedicated “That Dress Looks Nice on You” to his singer Dawn Landes because she was, in fact, wearing an amazing dress. The moment when he backed away from the mic as he sang, “I made a lot of mistakes,” on the encore of “Chicago,” adding an extra edge of regret to the line.
Set List:
“Redford (For Yia Yia & Pappou)”
“Death with Dignity”
“Should Have Known Better”
“Drawn to the Blood”
“All of Me Wants All of You”
“Eugene”
“John My Beloved”
“The Only Thing”
“Fourth of July”
“No Shade In the Shadow of the Cross”
“Carrie & Lowell”
“The Owl and The Tanager”
“In the Devil’s Territory”
“For the Widows In Paradise, For the Fatherless In Ypsilanti”
“That Dress Looks Nice On You”
“Futile Devices”
“The Predatory Wasp of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!”
“Blue Bucket of Gold”Encore:
“Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois”
“Casimir Pulaski Day”
“Chicago”