Husky :: "History's Door"

No one has played a piano as delicately as the opening to Husky's "History's Door" since Sufjan waxed philosophical about a UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois back in 2005. The progression here rings of the neo-folk movement that rocketed bands like Mumford and Sons and Dry The River to the top of the building. Husky pursue the same set of imperatives as the aforementioned bands, a sparse arrangement that unwinds toward something more and more uplifting. The final act features rolling drums and a doubling of the chorus that features at least one memorable, pseudo-falsetto note. The sanctimony is never far from the backing vocals and the seriousness of purpose, all enlivened with enough to keep the elegiac qualities just a bit at bay. Put another way, if this is what sorrow sounds like, sorrow doesn't sound so bad.

Listen :: Husky - "History's Door"

Tidelands :: "Marigolds"

Oh, to be elevated, that curious anti-gravity, lifting and gaining momentum against every Newtonian law. But it is rare, to be sure, these upwardly mobile chord progressions, half because of innate difficulties and half because we live in an age where elevation feels dishonest. Our position already so edified, so ripe for tipping, we feel guilt, fear. We are watershed people, standing on a horrific fulcrum, aware of our precipice and how everything runs away, down to the sea. Chose your continental divide, we think, but the way out is certainly not headed up. Yet, even in a world rife with cultural anxiety, where a comparatively meaningless band like Tidelands can write a seven-and-a-half minute song ostensibly about flowers, all is never lost. The horns are lifted from Sufjan Stevens circa 2005, but the melody and its plucked acoustic roots have no interest in staying grounded. These refuse to be simple cover ups, nor a dishonestly positive rendition of a negative time. This sounds like the slowest of liftoffs and the knowledge that the sun never stops rising in the east.

Listen :: Tidelands - "Marigolds"

Sufjan Stevens :: "Too Much"

The next movement in Sufjan Stevens pysch-out-electro opus The Age of Adz hit the Internet today in unsettling, glitchy glory. "Too Much" is built on a central lyric, "there's too much riding on that/too much, too much," with washing synths and strings filling in the architecture around a foundation of halting electronic beats. After a Kid A-breakdown in the song's fifth minute, Stevens tests our will and the spacial limitations of his music in a final movement that pits fluttering strings and horns against laser synths. He rides this impulse toward the edge, a nearly uncomfortable man-versus-machine saturation, before letting the gears spin off and cough quietly out the door.

Sufjan Stevens :: "I Walked"

Sufjan Stevens played the Bowery Ballroom this fall and it was sold out as a matter of course. It had been four years and a little bit since he played five straight nights at the same venue promoting his masterpiece, Illinois. At one of those 2005 shows, he called on the imagery of prom night, even having two members of the audience slow dance to cement this in our guts: It was prom night. By this winter it was not prom night anymore. It had been four years and he had done some weird things and we hadn't really heard from him. This felt more like getting coffee with an estranged ex-girlfriend.

Stevens played new material that cold night this past October. Odd electronics mixed with a-rhythmic verses and even occasional dissonance as the audience glanced around nervously. But if it was unsettling for the crowd, it was certainly not for Stevens. These were his first new, original songs since 2004 and he seemed at home in a new direction, away from states and towards something nearly futuristic and vaguely uncomfortable. That collection is The Age of Adz, due October 12 and it will represent this new artist who so blithely wrinkled his own fans noses at Bowery a year ago.

This is not to say The Age of Adz will be badly experimental, merely that it marks a serious break. If anything can be gathered from first track, "I Walked," it is that Stevens is still exploring the outer reaches of chamber-pop, haunting background vocals and soaring melodies in tow. But the aesthetic is undeniably different. Other than Sufjan's trademark keep-it-like-a-secret hushed vocals, the soundscape bears little resemblance to anything in his heretofore discography. The lyrics address the reality of walking away (or is it chasing someone) while Stevens himself moves from where we left him to where The Age of Adz will leave us. It will be different and it is most certainly not 2005. He is moving on and we are moving too, whether we move together is absolutely up for debate.

Happy Birthday, America.

Being an American in 2009 is a confusing assignment. We are supposed to be proud - this is what we're accused of anyways. We are supposed to be ashamed - a simple catalogue of our misdeeds would suffice. We are supposed to be waiting for the end - you know, us being the New Rome and all. So we are arrogant, self-critical, fatalists? Actually, sounds about right.

To the holiday at hand: the Fourth of July. It is a time when we sit outside, cook over open fire and celebrate sending the British home without their supper 233 years ago. The British, ironically, do not have a similar holiday for burning down the White House in 1814 during the War of 1812. Maybe this is why they are not a Superpower. Superpowers, after all, remain excellent at celebrating their success. Look at Russia: no celebrating, instant failure of political system, rejection of Superpower status. Not pretty.

We are and are not everything everyone says about us. We are not a broker of freedom. We aren't Satan. We're just a tiny rebellious colony dramatically morphed into the biggest economy and military in world history; all in less than 25 decades. It's an infomercial success story (actual results may differ). So, as the discussion of what it means to be an American continues, remember this: Don't believe the hype. We're just a little band who went to radio and were rewarded with massive popular support and massive popular backlash. We're doing our best and we'll try to remember where we came from. 

Listen :: Sufjan Stevens - "Star Spangled Banner"