Sufjan Stevens

A grandiose, lavish, arty concert from Sufjan Stevens, a brilliant songwriter who until recently wrote folk-rock songs and who now combines the old-style grace of "Seven Swans" and "Chicago" with the twenty-five minutes of psych and electro excess of "Impossible Soul".

After the acclaimed and ambitious folk-rock fresco of "Illinois" (2005) and a series of transitional works, the Michigan singer-songwriter plunged last year, with "The Age Of Adz", into new and unpredictable sonic territory. The artistic touchstone for this conversion is Royal Robertson, a schizophrenic Louisiana painter, self-proclaimed prophet, tormented by futuristic, sci-fi hallucinations. During the show, Stevens recounts with real feeling the story of Royal and his paintings, from which he drew much of the inspiration - and the artwork - for his latest, disorienting album.

The opening is spine-tingling, a genuinely memorable start to the show: the stage is wrapped in darkness, and Sufjan, barely lit, unleashes the acoustic, melancholy unfolding of "Seven Swans" until, at the song's emotional climax, shafts of light burst in alongside the drums to illuminate Stevens and the backing singers - revealing that everyone is wearing enormous white wings on their backs, a stage effect as surprising as it is effective, leaving the audience breathless.

Then the single "Too Much" kicks off the explosion of sounds and colors characteristic of the latest album, that "The Age Of Adz" which marked a break from the sound we'd grown used to. Sufjan Stevens has, for now, shed the guise of the simple - if brilliant - folk singer-songwriter; now the music springs from a visionary, apocalyptic bent and from psych and electro arrangements, which find full expression in the concert's staging, with film projections inspired by Robertson's paintings, grandiose psychedelic light shows, outlandish costumes and robotic dances. Altogether it's a multifaceted, captivating tableau, helped along by the presence onstage of no fewer than ten musicians, with two drum kits, a horn section, and two dancing backing singers.

A vividly colorful artistic spectacle, for a show that doesn't live on musical suggestion alone - this must have been Sufjan's idea; it's no accident that a theater was chosen as the venue, even though, in the more energetic moments, the crowd doesn't hesitate to get up and sing and dance (!) along with the talented songwriter.

After "Too Much" comes the title track "Age Of Adz", the song where the synthesis of Sufjan Stevens' past and present is achieved most successfully; the electro undercurrent, sometimes responsible for weighing down compositions in ways that don't always seem necessary, here finds a balance that allows the intense vocal line to shine. Stevens' two distinct sides intertwine and chase one another, with almost all the songs from "The Age Of Adz" performed between the concert's opening and closing sections, which are instead devoted to his folk side.

Sufjan delves, almost without pausing, into the schizophrenic world of "The Age Of Adz". After the splendid opening, the thread of the set sometimes seems to get tangled up in off-key experiments and excessive digressions, but the audience shows no sign of restlessness. The sold-out theater is truly enthusiastic.

Toward the end of the show, Sufjan considerately informs us that the next piece will consist of nothing less than twenty-five minutes of electro, dance and other experiments, but it takes only a few seconds for the entire audience to rise to its feet, clapping, singing the melody and dancing along to the last song before the encore.

We certainly don't want to ask Sufjan to renounce his recent arty, futuristic conversion, probably a necessary transitional phase, a temporary distancing from himself, a healthy lightening of the load, toward a more mature reworking of his own identity. The fact remains that while the songs on "The Age Of Adz" "merely" entertain, those on "Illinois" or elsewhere, like "Seven Swans", still carry a deeper energy, less emotionally offhand, expressions more coherent with the artist's spirit and history.

We're nearly at the end, with the Berlin crowd's applause continuing unabated, until, having completed the feat of "Impossible Soul", several minutes later Sufjan returns to the stage, back from the futuristic world at last in normal clothes. After a heartfelt declaration of love for the city, Stevens delivers the show's final flourishes, with three of the best songs from "Illinois": "Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois", the mournful elegy "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", and "Chicago"; the first two solo, the third with the full band.

It's a triumph: the sold-out theater is completely swept up in the intimate, magical symphony of "Chicago", before Sufjan, thanking the crowd, disappears running behind the curtain.

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