Sufjan Stevens @ Cirque Royal. 10.05.11

What was experienced last night at Cirque Royal – the venue that played host to the first night of Les Nuits Botaniques – was not really a concert, it was more of a sci-fi musical or a fine musical form of avant-garde theatre.

Stevens, a man whose progression as a popular folk musician changed dimension with 2010’s The Age of Adz, introduced us to an exposition of his soul, through a tale of the late artist, Royal Robertson. DM Stith – Sufjan’s protege, who both contributed and shared vocals with Sufjan – did his best to prepare us for the evening, with a loop pedal, a guitar and and some mild beatboxing, but the only true preparation was the sight of Sufjan Stevens and the band walking onto stage, covered in fluorescent tape, and adorning giant white wings, for the first song, ‘Seven Swans’. But fans of The Age of Adz would have known that even that wasn’t a sufficient indication of how the evening was to progress as the music became more and more experimental, the orchestration more improvisational and the catalogue of sounds so diverse that only a whole new genre could possibly define it.

The audience was quickly informed that the Cirque Royal was a spaceship for the evening, and that the evening’s entertainment would be of an intergalactic nature focusing on life, death, the apocalypse, the soul and other such trivial matters. The scene was set, and the show was about to kick off.

Following on from ‘Seven Swans’ with ‘Too Much’, the crowd was soon aware of the full power of the orchestration – the modular beats coming from Sufjan’s synthesizer being the driving force for the rest of the band – a selection of musicians which included three percussionists, two trombonists, one guitarist, one bassist, two female backing singers/dancers/performers, DM Stith and Zork the Destroyer – an apparently adopted name for the synth man and backup conductor. The ever powerful title track ‘The Age of Adz’ followed before a folky interlude (‘Heirloom’), which allowed everyone to regain their breath, and perhaps focus a little. Stevens then proceeded to explain the pop elements of the album, and how it had all come about from months of him playing around with synthesizers and computerized sounds, before it was actually translated into songs; he emphasized the importance of the sounds, as if the lyrics were essentially a side-effect of the music. We were then invited to dance to ‘I Walked’, before the effortlessly beautiful ‘The Owl & The Tanager’, proving that whilst he holds the obvious talent of a multi-instrumentalist futuristic composer he can “still write three minute love songs”, that allow his timid-tones to show their full potential.

‘Vesuvius’ was when it all really started to take shape – the soft piano building and building to create a drony wall of complex sound that fluttered out into nothing, only for the piano to come back in again. A few apocalyptic odes to Royal later and the gentle plucking of a guitar informed us that things were about to get all the more resplendent, it’s a disappointing two minutes in length on the album, but played live it’s soft melodies echo on for much longer, allowing enough time for the heavily hippie Zork the Destroyer to come to the front of stage with a microscopic keyboard just to hold it in front of the mic as if Moses were holding the 10 commandments.

‘Impossible Soul’ was always going to be the climax of the evening – and this twenty-five minute pop odyssey proved to be even more epic than expected – Sufjan wearing a silver helmet and half a disco ball to sing into a vocoder before switching for the slightly less kitsch option of wings, fluorescent clothing and a monkey mask before the cripplingly happy moment when hundreds of balloons drop from the ceiling and thousands of fans jump up and down in ecstasy and joy to the repetition of “Boy, we can do much more together … it’s not so impossible”. Surely a lasting memory for everyone involved.

A rapturous 15 minutes applause ensued, before Sufjan returned to the stage – solo and without the space suit – for the encore. Returning to his roots with ‘Concerning the UFO…’ and ‘Casimir Pulaski Day’ before leaving the evening with the ever glorious ‘Chicago’.

A fantastic opening to Les Nuits Botaniques, and surely a memory to be seared into the minds of all those present for years to come.

SETLIST
Seven Swans
Too Much
Age of Adz
Heirloom
I Walked
The Owl & the Tanager
Vesuvius
Get Real Get Right
Enchanting Ghost
I Want to be Well
Futile Devices
Impossible Soul
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Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois
Casimir Pulaski Day
Chicago